The Arrow and the Canary
by NinjaRiderWriter
Summary: Oliver and Sara Lance have returned to Starling City after defeating Ivo with Slade and Shado. They have directed themselves on the path left by Robert for his son to right their family's wrongs. Armed with a list of names, the two set forth to bring down the wicked. Together, alongside their allies, they strive to make Starling City safe from those who wish it harm. Sequel. AU.
1. Chapter 1

**This is the continuation of a previous story called The Choices That We Make. If you have not read it I would suggest going to my profile and reading it to avoid any confusion when reading this story. The story focuses primarily on a 'what if' situation in which Oliver did not choose Sara or Shado when Ivo threatened them, but rather chose to sacrifice himself instead. Oliver was shot and killed by Ivo, but was brought back to life by Sara, Shado and Slade with a syringe of Mirakuru, which infected him like it did Slade. The story focuses on what happened after this, with Oliver and Slade struggling to control the Mirakuru within them, Sara finding a place amongst them, and vengeance against Ivo.**

* * *

The elderly Chinese fisherman glanced backwards at the back of his old fishing boat; his son was treating their guests with tea and food, which they accepted graciously. The old man shook his head as he thought over the situation. He had been fishing along the shores of an uncharted island with his son when an explosion from the beach caught their attention.

When they had come ashore, people had appeared on what he had always thought to be an inhabitable island. The man in the green hood with a bow had revealed himself to be Oliver Queen, an American billionaire who had been stranded on Lian Yu for five years alone save for his companion, an American woman named Sara Lance.

When questioned if there were other castaways, the American archer had shaken his head and told the two in fluent Mandarin that only he and Sara had survived the island.

He didn't ask any more questions after that, and had simply invited them to come onto their boat so they could be taken to Hong Kong to return to their homes. The Americans were near the back of the boat currently, and his son was attending to them.

Sara Lance watched as the younger fisherman returned to the ship's prow, her sharp blue eyes taking in every detail just in the case that this was yet again one of many setups.

"It's odd, seeing those shores disappear," Sara whispered to her companion as they huddled together under a rough blanket that the Chinese fishermen had kindly given them. "When we first got off it, we were unconscious. But seeing us leave now… it's odd."

Oliver Queen looked at Sara Lance, his bright blue eyes as cold as ice. They warmed, ever so slightly, when he caught her gaze, his hand enveloped hers as they watched the shores of their hell, their Purgatory, recede into the mist. "Things are different this time," he assured her, "Waller can't stop us now."

Sara didn't look so sure, "She'll find out we escaped, and your sudden rise from the dead will be noticed. Being the heir to a fortune 500 company and a billionaire to boot will make the headlines of Starling City, maybe even go nationwide. When everyone realizes we're alive… your mom and sister… my mom and dad… _Laurel_ …" Oliver winced at the reminder of his former flame, how was she going to react when she realized her boyfriend and sister were in fact alive and, well, _dating_?

Oliver brought her closer to him, his arms tightening around her slender and scarred form. "It'll be okay, Sara…" He whispered to the woman he loved, the woman who had become a light in his dark world. "We're okay. Your family will be so happy to see you again."

Sara looked wistful at that, remembering the father that would cook her dinner, the mother that would help her with her AP homework, and the sister who she chatted with about school and boys and other subjects that just seemed silly now. Would that still be the same? Would she return to the home of a loving family, a mother who loved her, a father that cherished her, and a sister that adored her? Or was that life gone, just like how the girl who had been loved, cherished, and adored who had been on the _Queen's Gambit_ was gone?

"It's been _five years,_ Ollie," Sara said, using the old nickname she had called him with affection. "A lot can change in five years… just look at us." She looked down at her torso, seeing through the fabric that shielded her multitude of scars from the world. She looked up at Oliver and pressed a hand over his heart; she could feel each heartbeat through his ripped green shirt, how strong it was and oh so fast it shouldn't be humanly possible.

"We're going to run into trouble when they take you to a hospital," she said with a frown, her hand still over his rapidly beating heart. "I think the doctors will realize that your heartbeat is beating at twice the speed of a normal human… and the fact that their needles might not even pierce your skin… or the fact that if they _do_ decide to cut you open to see what makes you tick, it would heal right back up in the matter of seconds."

Oliver wrapped his hand over hers, fingers wrapping around her wrist as he pulled them to his lips. He kissed her hand softly, caressing the scarred skin with such tenderness it would have made any normal girl swoon, but Sara wasn't a normal girl, not anymore. Life the past five years had ripped the naïve girl out of her, leaving nothing but a hardened killer left.

"Don't worry about me, I'm used to being on the operation table… Waller must have had a field day with Slade and I when she realized we were practically invincible." Oliver said, wincing as he remembered the beginning stages of his life at A.R.G.U.S. that was not a fun time in the slightest. He could still vividly remembering kidnapping Tommy to convince him that Oliver Queen was rotting at the bottom of the ocean with his father and Sara.

"Shado never did trust her," Sara noted with a frown as she remembered her 'boss' who had forced them to do her bidding, as though they were nothing more than tools for the cold woman to use on a whim.

"Hmph… none of us were ever really trusting," Oliver said with a wry grin.

"For good reasons, too." Sara said with no emotion, her blue eyes as cold as ice, as cold as Oliver's. It made Oliver frown, cursing the world that destroyed Sara's innocence. When they had first left Lian Yu, thanks to several predator strikes on the _Amazo,_ courtesy of one Amanda Waller _,_ she was the only one in their family who had never killed anyone. But now as they left again, Sara was a hardened killer with more than enough blood staining her hands to never wash away no matter how hard she scrubbed, the blood still remained, only it was hidden underneath her skin and in her soul. Sara sighed wearily, "Everything's going to change now, Oliver… and usually change tries kills us."

"It does," he agreed softly, holding her hands tightly in his own. "But we're still here," he said as his body began to burn as he remembered the bullet holes that had hurt him, the countless bruises that had come from clenched fists, burns that had blackened his skin until it threatened to crack, fatal cuts from swords and katanas alike, if not for the _Mirakuru_ and its amazing healing regeneration, he would be a walking scar. No matter what happened to him, he survived and the wounds faded, leaving him a blank canvas.

He couldn't say the same thing about the woman sitting next to him. Sara didn't have the luxury of her scars fading over night from torture or battle. Every scar she had Oliver knew where it was and what caused it by heart, every night he would hold her in his arms, feel the scars underneath his fingertips, scars that he should have shared with her, and promise to himself internally that she will never be hurt again when he is there, though in his heart he knew that promise would never be kept. Their lives were too dangerous for it to suddenly stop.

When they returned to their city, Starling City, it wouldn't just end for them with a happy ever after. There were no such thing as a happy ending in their lives. Oliver had sworn to his father's memory to right the wrongs the Queen family had done to the citizens of Starling City. The son would right the wrongs of the father, and Sara would be there to help him the entire way, just as she had always has.

"We're finally going home," Sara whispered to herself, though Oliver could hear the disbelief in her tone. Never had they believed they would be able to return to the city of their birth after A.R.G.U.S. but yet here they were.

After five years in hell, both on and off of Lian Yu, Oliver Queen and Sara Lance were finally leaving where it all began. They were finally returning home, only the people that had first arrived there weren't the people leaving.

Starling City was dying. Dying from the wealthy who used their power to bully and bribe their way out of trouble from the law. Starling City was nothing but a haven for corruption and bloodshed, a rotting carcass of social decay. Those who used their power in such ways were nothing more than aggressive tumors, slowly infecting the rest of the city. But such diseases could be purged; all that was needed was a surgeon and a tool.

Oliver Queen and Sara Lance would be the ones to kill those men and women, people who thought themselves invincible and the lives around them inferior and nothing more than cannon fodder. Their days were numbered, their sense of safety would be shattered, their lives taken, and everything they had worked for would be destroyed.

They would be the ones to right the wrongs of the Queen family, the ones to rid Starling City of those who were poisoning it. But Sara Lance and Oliver Queen couldn't do so as themselves, they would have to become someone else in order to save their dying city. They had to become something else.

And after five years in hell, killing anyone who stood in their way, shedding their old selves until nothing remained of the people they had been before the _Gambit_ , Oliver Queen and Sara Lance had achieved that goal of becoming something else. They would be a symbol to the people of Starling City.

To wicked, they would be feared and the ones who thought themselves invincible would sleep with one eye open, knowing that their days were numbered.

To the innocent, they would be revered and beloved as violent, yet justified, protectors; the wicked who hurt them would find themselves struck down by arrows and knives, while the innocent would be helped up and allowed to rise.

Change was coming to Starling City.

* * *

Sara Lance never thought that she would ever see the bright lights of Starling City ever again, but yet here she stood in Starling Memorial Hospital, looking at the bright lights that made Starling shine like a diamond. She clung to her new shirt, the new fabric felt odd on her scarred skin, as she gazed upon her city, her home.

Her family was here… Laurel, Dinah, and Quentin. Her sister, her mother, and her father. Had they been told of her survival? Surely they must have by now, though she had yet to see them. Would they even come to visit despite knowing that she had only 'died' because she had cheated someone who had been Laurel's boyfriend, who was now Sara's boyfriend, before the Gambit sank that fateful night?

Laurel… how was Laurel going to react when she realized that her and Oliver were together as girlfriend and boyfriend? She didn't like the terms though, as though their relationship was anything but normal, Sara loved him so much, and he loved her. They were soul mates. Tortured souls brought together by pain, agony and love. That was what they were. They had gone through hell and back multiple times with Slade and Shado; they weren't a normal couple in the slightest.

If her family didn't come to see her, Sara would understand. Sure it would hurt and break her already broken heart a little more, but she would adapt as she always had. She didn't need much in life, just the family that had been forged on Lian Yu. They were all that she needed. She missed her family, they were blood, but she had betrayed her sister by sleeping with her boyfriend, and would no doubt be less forgiving than their parents. Maybe her mother would visit, and maybe her father too, but Sara didn't know what Laurel would do.

Sara desperately yearned for her family, her family forged on the island and beyond those bloodstained shores. But Shado and Slade weren't here. It had been difficult to stop Oliver's sudden outburst when the doctors had tried to separate them. The _Mirakuru_ had tried to take over again, as always, when Oliver's emotions rose. He was awfully protective of Sara, and the thought of separation hadn't been pleasing to him. The doctors should be happy no one died, just because the Mirakuru was under Oliver's control didn't mean that it didn't rear its head up once in a while.

She had thought that returning home would make everything better. When she had lain upon the wreckage of the Queen's Gambit, believing that she had been the lone survivor of the wreckage, she had just wanted to go home. But now here she was and she didn't know what to say. She didn't know what to feel, knowing that Starling City's diamond shell was really a rotting corpse of crime and corruption underneath.

She couldn't ignore that. She couldn't ignore the corruption and dark evil that held Starling City in a chokehold, slowly killing the city she called home. She couldn't ignore the cries for help by the weak and defenseless. She couldn't ignore the terrible crime that haunted the city, keeping the streets wet with blood and the civilians too scared to venture from their homes when the sun went down.

Soon, she could leave the hospital. The doctors had told her that she was in full health and could leave soon. But she had noticed the way they looked at her when they thought she wasn't looking, staring at her body and all her scars and wondering how she had gotten them. She hated those stares. She wasn't afraid to show her scars; to her they were a sign of strength and what she had overcome. But she hated the attention, she would much rather be ignored or unnoticeable, that way it would be easy to slip away without detection.

The urge to escape the confines of her hospital room was tempting; she hated the white pristine wall, the white sheets, the white pillow, the white machines, the white flooring. _What is it with hospitals and white?_ Sara wondered, eyeing the room distastefully, her eyes burning slightly as she looked at the bright color, _it looks as though someone whitewashed everything and soaked it with bleach. It hurts just looking at it._

With a sigh at the overall whiteness of the room -it was a stupid color anyway, too bright and noticeable- Sara returned to looking out the window, enchanted by the movement in the streets below her.

She wondered what Oliver was doing at the moment. Perhaps his family had come to see him? She hadn't heard anything since the doctors had separated them, but if she knew anything about Oliver's mother and sister, they would have been raced to the hospital the second they heard the news that Oliver was alive.

 _Hopefully they won't start asking questions that are best left unanswered,_ Sara thought, wrapping her arms around her scarred chest tightly. Unease swept through her, sinking its fangs into her and making her nervous, her heart fluttering against her chest like a bird trying to escape its cage. _What if they don't like me? What if they don't approve?_ The question was silly really, Oliver loved her and no matter how much he loved his family; he would continue to love her even if they didn't approve of Sara, but she was still human and had her faults. One of them was doubt.

Soon Oliver would meet up with Sara after he was released as well. Sara wondered what the doctors had diagnosed Oliver with, she had bet to Oliver that they would think his accelerated heartbeat was due to tachycardia. Oliver had given her a blank look at that, not understanding what tachycardia even was.

She laughed silently under her breath at the memory, before the smile fell from her lips as she saw her reflection in the mirror. It was just so odd for her to see herself smiling; it was rather unnerving. She pressed the palm of her hand against the cool glass, staring out at the vast expanse of the home she hadn't seen in two years, when a brief mission with A.R.G.U.S. had brought her back.

She hadn't realized until then how much she had missed her home.

* * *

Laurel Lance had had an interesting week to say the very least.

Her life had been thrown into chaos the second her father had called her at work, sobbing into the phone as he relayed to her the news he had just received from some officials in China about two castaways being found on a remote island.

 _Sara was alive,_ her father had sobbed, his voice thick with emotion.

It had floored her, taken her completely by surprise. She briefly recalled that the phone had slipped from her trembling fingers the second her father had told her. Joanna had even claimed that she had fallen from the shock, as though she had been knocked down by some unseen force, but Laurel could barely remember anything of the moment besides her father's sobs and the reality shattering truth:

 _Sara Lance and Oliver Queen were alive._

It was all over the news. News reporters had swarmed the hospital like vultures, eagerly awaiting for a glimpse of either the Queen or Lance family, though Laurel knew that they would prefer the former. The Lances were an unknown family, middle-class and forgettable. The Queens were entirely different however. Everywhere she went, she saw tabloids plastered with Oliver's face, grinning that boyish grin that she had once thought charming but now found insufferable, with headlines like: _Lost Billionaire Found! Oliver Queen Alive!_ _Queen Heir Returns From the Dead!_

A few of them mentioned Sara Lance, but it was mostly focused on the more known, and richer, castaway: Oliver Queen.

 _Oliver…_

Laurel didn't know how she felt about Oliver at the moment. She had been happy to find out that he had survived, but the joy of his survival had turned bitter at the reminder of what he had done. Of what _Sara_ had done. Laurel had tried to ignore that bitter, resentful voice in the back of her head, whispering dark reminders and terrible truths, but it was hard to ignore.

For now, Laurel tried to think of the positive.

Sara was alive.

Her sister was alive.

Sara was _alive._

Laurel didn't know if the tears burning in her eyes were tears of joy, or tears of anger.

Sara was alive, but she had a lot of explaining to do.

But right now, despite the betrayal and the lies, Laurel could only focus on the fact that her sister was alive and was in the same building as her.

Her father was pacing the waiting room, prowling around like an angry predator. He was wringing his hands worriedly, often scuffing the soles of his boots against the luminous tile every so often. Her mother was calmer, sitting in one of the chairs, but Laurel noticed the tension in her shoulders. Dinah seemed to be wholly interested in her hands, which were clasped tightly together.

Laurel wanted to smile, she truly did. It had been years since she had seen her parents in the same room with one another without one yelling at the other and hurling horrible words. The phantom emergence of the smile faded away, a bitter grimace replacing the forming smile. The Lance family had been destroyed the day they heard of Sara's unlikely demise.

It was Sara's death that tore them apart, and now it seemed Sara's survival was what was bringing them all back together.

 _Thud-thud-thud-thud-thud._

Her father's steady, if somewhat quick, pacing seemed to resonate within Laurel, the sound rhythmic and soothing to Laurel's stressed nerves.

They had been waiting in the empty room for several hours, just waiting and waiting. The only news they had gotten of Sara had been when a tired doctor had rushed in to inform them that they had taken Sara into surgery, mumbling something about resetting broken ribs before hurrying off. Her father had begun his pacing as soon as the doctor had rushed out of the room.

Her father's footsteps seemed to grow quicker _thud-thud-thud-thud-thud thudthudthudthud._

"Dad, you need to calm down." Laurel cautioned her father, knowing that five years of drinking, constant depression and anxiety hadn't helped her father's health in the slightest. Yet another thing Sara had inadvertently caused.

"I'm fine," Quentin said gruffly, just as surly as ever though now he was more nervous than sullen.

Laurel's mother, Dinah, glanced up from where she had been staring at her tightly clasped fingers, and frowned at Quentin. "Don't be so gruff, Quentin," Dinah chastised, sending a look towards Laurel worriedly. "Now is not the time. Laurel is right, you need to calm down."

Quentin's scowl became a snarl, "Don't tell me to calm down, Dinah. How can you expect me to sit still as we wait for news about Sara, huh?"

Dinah's eyes narrowed dangerously, her lips pursed in a tight line. Dinah looked ready to snap at the man she had once called her husband, but she just stiffly turned her head to the side, looking at everything but Quentin. Laurel sighed a little, though whether from relief or annoyance, she did not know.

Laurel was just glad they weren't yelling at one another. The last time they had all been together had been two years ago at Thanksgiving with all of them well aware of the empty placemat at their table, and her father had drank himself into a drunken stupor as her mother berated him. The fight that had occurred had been terrible. Her mother had moved out after that.

 _And it all happened because Sara got onto that yacht with my boyfriend,_ that small little voice whispered bitterly in her head.

A part of Laurel blamed Sara for every hardship the Lance family had gone through in the past five years.

It was Sara's death that made their father put all his attention into his work, trying to forget his pain by rounding up every thug he could. His work had become his obsession, consuming him in a most unhealthy way. Laurel could still hear her mother's worried arguments with her father about how much he had buried himself in his work, ignoring what remained of his family in the process. It hadn't helped when a serial killer called the Dollmaker, now known to the public as Barton Mathis, emerged from the dark crevices of the criminal underworld and began his killing spree. Quentin had become obsessed with the serial killer, almost _possessed_ , to the point that Laurel couldn't help but wonder if her father had finally hit his breaking point. She thought that Sara's death had finally broken him and the only way he could survive was by hunting down common thugs and sociopathic serial killers alike until he was finally taken out by a nameless armed grunt, and bled out in the gutter.

It was Sara's death that caused every argument between her parents. It was because of those arguments and her father burying himself in his work, obsessively trying to forget the pain but forgetting of his family in the process, that her mother divorced her father and went away to Central City, rarely visiting aside for holidays that were often tense and uncomfortable instead of full of holiday cheer.

And Laurel had been forced to watch as her family was broken apart and torn asunder. She mourned Sara's death alongside her father and mother, shedding tears alongside her father and clinging to her mother when the horrifying reality grappled with her, reminding her that her little sister was dead and wasn't coming back.

A part of Laurel hated Sara for what she had done, breaking apart everything in Laurel's life: her family, her relationship with her boyfriend and Laurel's trust in her sister. Sara had broken it all, and Laurel wondered if she could ever truly forgive her.

A young doctor emerged from the double doors that opened into the dark recesses of the hospital. He looked positively exhausted and seemed to be running on fumes and an unhealthy amount of coffee, but he still quickly walked over to the Lance family. Laurel's dad stopped pacing as her mom looked up; Laurel just stared.

"You can see her now," the doctor explained.

Dinah stood from her chair as Laurel and Quentin rushed over. Suddenly Laurel found herself walking behind the doctor through a maze of hallways, going up in an elevator several floors up, turning right, passing dozens of rooms, before slowing down near a dead end hallway

Her father had tried to speak to the doctor, but whenever he opened his mouth, he snapped it shut as though he found difficulty to speak.

The disheveled doctor suddenly paused at a door with the number _D-52_. "This is it," the doctor said as he opened the door, ushering the three Lances inside. They found themselves in an empty room, almost like an entryway, that had several chairs lined against the wall and a glass door that led into another room that held a bed, an IV and a heart monitor.

Laurel felt the air leave her chest when she saw a shadowed silhouette through the glass door. Her heart seemed to leap into her throat when the silhouette moved slightly, a small ray of light exposing long blonde hair that was all too familiar.

She faintly heard her mother's strangled gasp and her father's chocked sob of relief.

 _Sara._

It was Sara.

 _Sara._

Her heart seemed ready to burst out of her chest, and Laurel Lance found it suddenly hard to breathe as she stared at the back of Sara Lance. Relief and joy swarmed through her, washing away every bitter thought and resentment that had been engrained in her and now filling her with warmth as she stared at her sister. Any doubts of her sister's survival, a coping mechanism that prepared Laurel for the worst that reality could send her, faded away as she stared at her little sister.

Laurel had never felt so happy in her entire life.

But, of course, reality set down upon her with the weight of the world when the disheveled doctor began to go into further depth of just what had happened to Sara Lance in the past years.

It seemed that the past five years hadn't been pleasant for any members of the Lance family.

"Your daughter has extensive scar tissue all over her body. The last person I've seen with such damage was a veteran injured in Iraq…" the doctor told Quentin who stood besides him, his jaw clenched tight as Dinah's face fell and her eyes watered, tears threatening to form. "Burns on the back, scars that appear to be knife and bullet wounds scattered around her entire body, a burn that appears to have been caused by what have may been a grenade was found on her left ankle, and she has had several fractures that have never healed properly," the doctor listed off some of the wounds from the rather large list of injuries they had found of the rescued Lance daughter. There were others but some of the wounds they had found were something one shouldn't share with a grieving family who had just gotten their daughter back from the dead, but even though he had only listed a small margin of Sara's injuries gained over half a decade, the Lances were shell shocked.

Quentin Lance looked as though he had swallowed something disgusting, his entire face set in a gruff and twisted grimace as he looked at his baby girl for the first time in five years through the glass door that separated them, as death had supposedly separated them for half a decade. _Sara… my little girl,_ he thought with teary eyes, the gruff cop infamous throughout Starling City replaced with that of a father whose dead child had been returned to him.

"What happened to her?" Laurel whispered, horrified.

"We don't know, she hasn't said anything. Neither of them have said anything since they arrived here," the doctor explained.

Quentin's entire form twitched at the mentioning of Sara's fellow castaway, _Queen._ Even if it took him the rest of his life, he was going to make that son of a bitch pay for everything the Lance family had gone through when he took Sara aboard the Queen's Gambit, starting with a restraining order that wouldn't allow Oliver to be in the same country as his Sara.

"Can we go in?" Dinah's voice was so soft and desperate as she looked at the back of her daughter, who had not yet noticed the small group behind her doors; Sara was still staring out in the vastness of Starling City.

"You may, but I should warn you… the daughter and sister you lost… might not be the one you found. They have both gone through something terrible together, even though we do not know the full story it is rather obvious by their injuries and emotional responses. When we tried to separate her from Mr. Queen to take her into surgery to reset the broken fractures, he became rather violent. He knocked out three nurses before we were able to sedate him with a rather strong tranquilizer, he managed to stay awake for a while before succumbing to unconsciousness. "

"Ollie _attacked_ people?" Laurel gasped, a hand flying to cover her mouth. The Oliver Queen she had once known had gotten into fights when he drank and partied too much, but that was always the drinking. Sober Oliver was rather passive, he wasn't a fighter, but looking back after all those years, did she even know the real Oliver? He _had_ cheated on her with Sara, her _sister._ And that was something she had yet to forgive them.

 _Give them a chance, just let them explain,_ that small little voice in the back of her head that was the part of her to have everything to go back to the way it was before the sinking of the Queen's Gambit, that little voice of forgiveness. Laurel didn't know if she was ready to forgive… but those scars, just what had her little sister gone through in these past five years? Had Oliver gone through it as well with her?"

The inner lawyer in her, the one that wanted to know all the facts, wanted to storm in there and demand answers, no matter how insensitive or badly timed. Laurel was a woman who needed cold hard facts; it's everything a lawyer needed in life. But this wasn't a case given to her by the DA, this was her sister and former boyfriend's lives. Laurel would give them a few days of adjustment before asking the hard questions.

"Yes. Mr. Queen is currently in the psych ward going through a mental evaluation. No one was seriously injured though one doctor is being treated for a broken hand. Miss Lance here," the doctor nodded his head at Sara, "confronted him, and spoke to him during the chaos of it all. He went quietly after that, although that may have been the sedatives kicking in."

Laurel tried to not find the situation bizarre, but she couldn't help it. The past couple days had been hectic, complete chaos. She hadn't slept since her father had called her and told her that Sara had been found, that Sara was _alive_. Her mother had flown over from Central City as fast as she could when Laurel had called her, and now the Lance family stood in Starling Central Memorial Hospital reunited after five years of hardship.

"You can go in now." The doctor said before leaving them at the doorway.

Sara was _right there._ The only thing that divided the Lances from the wayward daughter/sister was a panel of glass. Laurel wanted to see her. She had to see Sara. Laurel needed to see Sara's face, not just the back of her from behind the door, but to look Sara in the eyes to confirm that it truly was her sister and not some sick joke that reality was so fond of giving her.

Taking a deep breath to settle the nerves that were bubbling in the pit of her stomach, Laurel pushed the glass door and stepped into her sister's hospital room, her mother and father quickly following her.

* * *

Sara stiffened when she heard the door open, her heart fluttering like a bird trapped in a cage, as she head the door close and whoever had entered. She kept her sights on the city sprawled under her, refusing to look at the intruders for fear of who they were, or rather who they weren't. She wondered if it was the doctor again, asking her what happened to give her such horrific scars. Sara had to wonder if she told him the truth, would he laugh at the impossible she had seen and witnessed or lock her in the insanity ward at Iron Heights?

"Sara…" Laurel said softly, unable to help herself as she stared at the sister who she had thought dead.

Laurel saw Sara's shoulder stiffen, tense like that of an animal trapped in a corner, but before she could say anything, her little sister turned around to face the rest of the Lance family.

Sara's eyes began to water as she saw who they were. "Mom… Dad… Laurel…" Sara whispered out as she saw her family for the first time in five years. She had never truly known if she would ever see them again, even after the island where they had worked for A.R.G.U.S. Sara had never known if she could or would be able to see her family in the flesh after half a decade.

Quentin's face quivered, "Hey baby girl," he whispered softly, his voice catching as he called Sara by the nickname he had given her when she had been a little girl. "It's been awhile."

Tears sprung from Sara's eyes, she closed them as though to ward them off but found herself unable too. She may be a hardened killer who was remorseless to those who spited her or endangered her family, but underneath the cold exterior of the Canary was a woman who was finally home. "Hi daddy…."

The iron wall that Quentin had erected around himself after his severe depression over losing his daughter shattered like glass; he was openly crying as he hurried forward and wrapped his arms around his daughter, who, after briefly tensing again, wrapped her arms around her father as she cried with him.

"Sara… Oh Sara…" Quentin wept as he held her, holding her as tightly as possible as though terrified that if he let go she would leave again. "My little girl… my sweet little girl."

"I'm sorry, Daddy…" Sara cried as she clung to him as though afraid he would be ripped from her grasps, and Quentin held her just as strongly. _"I'm so sorry."_

"Hey, hey hey," Quentin held her closer, quietly shushing her as Sara gasped for breath. "It's alright, sweetie. I'm right here, I'm right here."

Sara's fingers gripped the man's detective coat in a vice-like grip, "I missed you, daddy."

The detective was crying so much that Sara's face was blurry for him, his lips quivered as he spoke so softly, sounding so broken yet so happy it made Sara want to remain in his arms forever. "I missed you too, baby girl."

He released her with a breathy laugh, to look her over, smiling brightly at her with tears in his eyes. Sara immediately looked behind him, catching the movement behind her father's back, and found herself looking at her older sister. Laurel.

Sara suddenly found herself face to face with her sister after five years of separation. She locked eyes with Laurel and froze immediately under her gaze. For years she had imagined their reunion, had planned out her explanation word by word, but now all the preparation and explanations had left her head, leaving her standing there, almost tongue tied.

"Laurel," Sara began as she waited for the accusations and shouting that were to come. "I'm-"

Laurel hugged her tightly, clinging to her sister's form as though her life depended on it. Sara stopped talking, blinking a couple times before she realized what was happening, and that Laurel wasn't cursing her name. More tears silently fell as Sara clung to Laurel as well.

The two sisters clung to one another, neither one speaking as they held one another tightly, both of them with tears in their eyes. Sara knew that this moment couldn't last; she had seen the anger and hurt in Laurel's eyes, the accusation waiting to be flung at her. She knew that it was only because this was the first time the two of them had seen each other in years Laurel hadn't begun yelling at her, accusing her, and Sara knew that she had no defense. She had gone on the _Queen's Gambit_ with Laurel's boyfriend, who was now _Sara's_ boyfriend. Sara again wondered what Laurel would say when she found out that small tidbit of information.

Sara didn't even know if she could even defend herself, because she knew that Laurel had every right to be furious with her.

But Sara Lance discarded the worrisome thoughts, only focusing on Laurel right now, focusing on the present instead of the approaching future.

Sara saw movement to her left, she glanced there to see familiar blonde hair and watery brown eyes. Sara slowly untangled herself from Laurel's grip, staring at the only person she had yet to greet.

"Hi mom." Sara said to her mother, smiling at Dinah with blood-shot eyes as tears continued to stream down her eyes. Sara hadn't cried in years, having seen it as a weakness that could only be shown in the company of a select few, but now Sara could take down her defenses and allow the tears to fall, if only this once.

Dinah looked at her daughter with watery eyes and a face that bespoke of utter joy. Her face trembled and tears trailed down her tanned cheeks in thick rivulets, like little rivers. "I knew it," she whispered, voice quivering. "I knew you were alive!" Dinah hugged her daughter tightly, kissing her temple, stroking the blonde hair that Sara had inherited from her. "I knew it. I knew it. I knew it." She whispered those words like a mantra, relief in her tone as she held the daughter she had lost.

"Oh Sara…" Dinah cried out, clutching her daughter tightly in her arms. "Sara… Sara… my sweet girl…. You're home…. You're home… You're safe…"

Sara cried with her, "I'm home, mom…. I'm back…. I missed you… I missed you all… I'm so sorry…. I'm so sorry…"

And she was sorry, even if she didn't regret it. She was sorry that she had gotten on the _Queen's Gambit_ with Oliver Queen, she was sorry that it had taken her five years to return home to her family. But she held no regrets, if she hadn't done what she had done, than Oliver would have had no one to help him with what he was planning now. She held no regrets, even if her life hadn't been what she had thought it to be, she wouldn't have given it up. If she had never gotten onto the _Gambit_ , she would probably be a normal civilian, naïve and innocent, instead of the warrior she was now. If she hadn't gone on the yacht, she would have never gotten to meet Slade and Shado. If she hadn't gotten on the yacht, she wouldn't be who she truly was now. She would never have become the Canary.

Her family, her beautiful family, thought they had gotten their daughter and sister back. They thought they got the Sara they lost five years ago back. But they didn't know the truth: that the old Sara Lance was dead.

Her family was here. They weren't figments of her imagination; they were actually here with her right now. They were all around her, and while Sara knew that sooner or later they –namely Laurel- would ask uncomfortable questions, she couldn't ignore the fact that her family was right before her.

Sara found herself surrounded. Normally if she had been in a small enclosed room with people crowding around her, she would attack them until they were either unconscious or dead, but there was no sign of danger, only safety.

It was just Sara, mom, dad and Laurel. The Lance family reunited once again.

They were here, with her, after five years of separation. They didn't hate her; they were shedding tears of joy at this beautiful reunion that everyone, including Sara herself, had thought impossible.

They clung to one another. Dinah, Quentin, Laurel and Sara. The Lances held one another, their family reborn. They clung to one another in support, they clung to one another as though afraid another would leave their grasps and never return.

And as Sara cried alongside her parents and sister, she silently swore that she would never be taken from her family again.


	2. Chapter 2

It seemed all too soon for her family to leave, but Sara's doctor had been adamant that they all gave Sara time to rest. Quentin had looked none too pleased, and Sara was sure that he was about to pull out his police badge, but the man had backed down quietly when Sara had admitted that she was exhausted. Her father had given her another tight hug, murmuring to her to get better, gave her a quick kiss on the cheek and allowed himself to be pulled out of the hospital room by Laurel and Dinah with Sara's doctor right on their heels.

She let out a shaky breath she hadn't even known she had been holding. Her stomach was churning and her fingers continued to tremble and twitch from the endless onslaught of nerves from the reunion of her family. But still, the wide beam of a smile and teary eyes reminded Sara of all the joy and love she had felt when she had saw her mother, father and sister again after so long. She had missed them so much, and they had missed her.

Now it was time to find Oliver.

Sara had no doubt that he was somewhere above her in a private room. Moira Queen had no doubt saved no expense to give her son the best medical care that money could buy. That meant she would have to go up several floors in an heavily occupied hospital without being caught by any wandering nurses. Even though she was in plainclothes –supplied to her by her family- and no longer in a medical gown, Sara knew without a doubt that the majority of workers in the building knew her face. After all, it had been plastered all over the news alongside Oliver's, and she had no doubt been the source of a great amount of gossip by the doctors and nurses.

 _Looks like all that time in A.R.G.U.S. skulking around the shadows with a blade in my hand really did pay off,_ Sara thought humorously, heading to her bed and grabbing her Starling City Rockets baseball cap, its black color somewhat faded due to the passage of time and wear, and exited the room.

Traversing the hallways wasn't too much of a challenge. She passed by a couple exhausted nurses and doctors that were working the graveyard shift, but they didn't pay her too much attention as they were mostly reading medical charts or walking in a daze like a zombie from lack of caffeine from cheap coffee. She kept her head down; her blonde curls covering some of her face while the rim of her cap hide the majority of her most recognizable facial features.

It wasn't too difficult to get in the elevator, thankfully empty, and pressed the button for the highest floor for patients. Oliver's wealth and family prestige would entitle him to only the best service, finding his location was almost laughably due to how easy it was to correctly guess it.

Sara was pleasantly surprised to see that Oliver's door was unguarded. She had been prepared to find herself face to face with several bulky bodyguards that wouldn't budge from their position, as she had expected Moira to ensure that her son was completely safe. The Queen matriarch was highly protective of her children, as all mothers are, and Sara wouldn't have doubted that Moira would do everything in her power to make sure that her son was safe and secure after just getting him back after five years of believing him dead.

When Sara entered the room, she saw Oliver staring out the window, back facing her. He no longer wore the grungy clothing from the island, but had received a pair of sweatpants and a white t-shirt.

Despite herself, Sara felt a flicker of annoyance at that. _How come Ollie gets comfortable clothing and I was stuck with that stupid, scratchy hospital gown?_ She thought sourly, even as Oliver turned his head to greet her with a small smile. At least her family had brought her a change of civilian clothing, perfect for comfort and for blending in with the crowd if she had to flee the hospital.

She closed the door behind her, instinctively locking it. It wasn't a good lock, someone could easily break it down if they had a good shoulder and a bit of running room, but it was really just the concept of the lock that helped put Sara at ease. Locked rooms meant no one could enter without her noticing. Locked rooms were safe, even if only for a little bit.

"Isn't it beautiful?" Oliver spoke softly, his back to her, hands pressed into the pockets of his sweatpants. His eyes were staring out at the sprawling mass of light below him –street lights, neon signs, traffic lights, car lights; it was all visible to him- and there was something akin to a hunger in those eyes. Sara could understand it, when she had first caught sight of Starling City after so long, she had felt a ravenous hunger rise within her to never leave the window, to never tear her eyes away from the beautiful sight of her home. Even now, with an even greater view, Sara couldn't tear her eyes away from the scene; with just a single glance Sara could see the inner workings of the city, and the people that lived within it.

"It is beautiful." She admitted, still staring out at the brightly lit city. With the sun gone, and the electric lighting that enveloped the entire city in its artificial light, Starling City seemed almost alive. Almost. "It's dying though."

She saw the frown on Oliver's face at that, and suddenly the man standing besides her looked exhausted, almost depleted in both energy and will. She knew that he was tired of this life, tired of killing, tired of _fighting_ –especially when she thought about their time doing A.R.G.U.S. dirty work for Waller- but Sara knew that Oliver was no quitter. It had been his idea to return home and start this crusade of his, and it had been a simple choice for Sara –it hadn't even been a choice, not when she would follow him to the end of the world, just as he would for her- to come back home with him.

"I'll be right by your side."

A wry grin grew on his face, cracking away that almost shattered mask of weariness. "Just like always?" His hand left the sweatpants pocket, and he reached out for her, his fingers intertwining with hers.

She gave his hand a gentle squeeze. "Like always." It was a sign of assurance, as though it were a reminder that she would always be there for him, that she would never leave him to fight alone. It wasn't necessarily needed, as Oliver was well aware of her loyalty and care for him, but Sara still wanted him to know –to know that she would stand by him, that she would fight and kill for him, to know that she loved him.

Oliver's fingers remained intertwined with her own as they stared out at their home together.

Time seemed to slow down, ebbed down to nothing more than a moment of reflective silence as the two stared at their home. Their beautiful, dying home. How long did it have? How long would it take to save their city?

 _We have the skills and tools needed to remove the decay that is slowly killing Starling,_ Sara reflected as she continued to stare out the window, still clutching Oliver's hand. _We have the names; we have our targets. We can save this city from itself, even if people don't agree with our ways._

The safety that the people of Starling felt seemed wrong to Sara, because she knew all too well that safety was rare. At the surface, Starling City seemed safe, but danger and corruption dwelled underneath that surface like a second skin.

The people were still ignorant of what was to come, but soon they would know of vigilantes that stuck to the shadows and killed without warning and without mercy. Many people would fear them, innocent and guilty alike. _They'll label us killers, murderers, madmen, anarchists,_ Sara thought. _And maybe they're right. We are killers, but we won't harm the innocent, only the decay of society. With the List, we will fulfill Robert Queen's last wish. We'll avenge those who have been wronged._

Not to mention that Sara had her own agenda as well. Helping Oliver cross off the names was only one piece of her objective, and just as she was aiding him in his crusade, he was going to help her with her own mission. Together, they had a chance to take back their city and save it.

"How are you?" She looked up at him, noticing the bags under his eyes. Concern welled up within her as she stared at him; even if he was near indestructible due to the _Mirakuru_ she would always worry for him. It was just one of the side effects of loving him.

Oliver slowly gained a small, content smile. "I saw my mom." Oliver's smile seemed to grow even brighter, "I didn't know how much I had missed her until I saw her. Five years away… it feels so much longer now…." He looked saddened at that, eyes downcast and brows furrowed, but yet the smile remained –even if it was now bittersweet. "I always thought that she wouldn't recognize me; that I had changed too much for her to realize that I was her son… but she knew it was me… she _knew_ it was me, and I have no idea how…"

Despite his massive bulk and towering stature, Oliver seemed to shrink. He looked so vulnerable as he stared off at the dark horizon with bloodshot eyes that had shed too many tears. "So much has changed, Sara… and they can never know. My family and your family can never know the truth; we'll have to keep lying to them, day after day." His shoulders slumped, his head bowed down as though the weight of the world rested upon his shoulders, though it really was just the weight of the lies. And they had told so many lies, and they would continue to lie to their loved ones, only adding onto that soul-crushing weight of falsehoods and deceit.

She leaned against him, pressing her head against his shoulder and his arm automatically wrapped around her, pulling her closer. "We knew what we were getting into when we decided to come back home." She reminded him as she stared into his eyes, her fingers rising to idly stroke his cheek, the coarse bristles prickling her skin.

Oliver pressed his forehead against hers, his eyes clenched shut. He had once hated lying, and before Lian Yu he had been a horrible liar, but after five years he had become a proficient liar and lies had become a staple part of his life. The only people he could never bring himself to lie to had always been Sara, Shado and Slade.

"We both know that lying is the best course of action." Sara reminded him. "Our families… our siblings and parents…. They just wouldn't understand. Hell, even if we did tell them the truth, they still wouldn't understand."

A small chuckle escaped from his clenched jaw, and even though it sounded strangled it was still a laugh. His eyes seemed to warm and soften ever so slightly. "Sara Lance, always the voice of reason." He mused, kissing her softly on the nose, his forehead still pressed against hers.

She poked him in the chest playfully. "Someone has to be, you big brute."

Oliver laughed again, and it seemed lighter than before. "So I'm just the enforcer? The brawn to your brains? The lumbering goon of the great mastermind?"

She kissed him lightly on the cheek, a cheeky grin spreading. "You're a devilishly handsome goon." She said, as though the addition of two adjectives made it seem better.

The archer rolled his eyes at that, humor evident in his eyes as his shoulders seemed to relax, no longer so stiff and straight. He idly scratched his cheek, and Sara found herself staring at his face, a bit taken aback by the lack of facial hair. "Didn't want to keep your magnificent beard?" She asked him, silently mourning the loss, though she did have to agree on the fact that Oliver did look better with short hair.

Oliver shrugged; "Thought it'd be better to have a shave and 'civilize' myself. Most of Starling City is expecting the triumphant return of Ollie Queen: playboy extraordinaire, not some grungy man with the facial hair of a hobo. Tabloids must already be in a frenzy… wonder if any of them have tried to hack my medical records." Oliver frowned, the humor fading away faster than the eye could blink. Sara saw his fingers twitch, quickly grabbing at the air with the smallest of movements; it was a nervous tick he had developed over the years: an attempt to grab onto his bow for comfort.

"You were right by the way. I overheard Doctor Lamb telling my mother I had tachycardia." Oliver looked at her with a grimace, "I guess I do owe you lunch."

Sara cheeky grin lessened to a smaller smile, a part of her pleased that they wouldn't have to deal with annoyingly curious doctors, but a part of her still remained sad at all the lies. "At least now there won't be any awkward questions about what's wrong with you."

"Yeah…" Oliver's brows furrowed, "I didn't like how my mother looked at me. She looked so scared, as though I was about to drop dead before her. She wanted to run more tests because I hadn't had any serious medical complications before." Sara tensed at that prospect, her face paling at the implications, so Oliver hastily interjected, "-but I disagreed and so did Doctor Lamb."

She breathed out a sigh of relief. "We need to get you out of the hospital. We can't let them get a good look at you. Thankfully they didn't have any reason to cut you open; you look like you're in your prime health. Nothing wrong with you." She said the last part lightly, her lips twisting sarcastically.

Oliver chuckled darkly, finding her words morbidly amusing. "Nothing on the outside…" he stared out into the night, silently brooding over the _Mirakuru_ that still cursed him after so many years.

Sara grabbed ahold of his hand, and somewhere in his brooding silence Oliver grabbed her hand tightly in his grip, and allowed himself to be guided away from the window towards his hospital bed. Sara sat down at the edge, Oliver saw besides her, and the two said nothing as they were left to their own troublesome thoughts.

But suddenly his hands had grabbed onto hers, and his eyes were looking into her own with a sense of desperation. Sara saw something lingering deep within his eyes, some type of fear that he couldn't hide from her. "What is it?"

"What happened in the ER…" He sounded unsure, and his eyes seemed to soften as he looked downwards, looking rather ashamed of himself.

Sara didn't need him to explain. "It was just one time, you haven't lost control in years, Ollie. The _Mirakuru_ can't hurt you anymore, and it can't control you either."

"I know that, Sara," Oliver said, his grip on her hands tightening. "But it's still here," he tapped his heart. "And it'll always be there." He suddenly began to chuckle, but it was bitter. "The doctors think I had some sort of mental breakdown. At best, they'll say it was a severe panic attack."

She kissed him, and Oliver slowly relaxed at her touch. When she pulled away, she placed a hand on his cheek, her thumb idly brushing against the rough bristles. "You were scared." She said. "I was scared too. We were overwhelmed, both of us, not just you, Oliver. You saw us being separated and thought the worst, because whenever someone tries to separate one of us, something bad always happens. You acted on instinct." She slipped her hands in his, and he clung to her for support. "Don't be ashamed of a small slip up, not when you've gone through so much, and endured even more. No one died, and nothing bad came from it."

The archer shook his head at that, his eyes now averted to his bedspread. "Lamb told my mother, and she wasn't pleased by it. I actually think she was horrified…" a lump grew in his throat, choking him with the idea of his mother being afraid of him. "I know that I'll spend the rest of my life telling my mother lies, but I hadn't expected to lie so soon, even before I saw her for the first time in so long… I was prepared to lie about where I spent most of my nights, why I wasn't home for dinner, why I couldn't be reached at odd hours of the day and night. I was prepared to lie to keep her safe from what we are going to do. But…" Oliver's eyes clenched shut tightly, "I wasn't expecting to lie about my health. I wasn't expecting to lie to my mother that would make her worry as though I was about to die at any second."

"It's the best excuse we have," Sara reminded him gently. "Your heart beats at double the rate of a normal human being. There was no way we could leave the hospital without an excuse. It's not as though we're lying about a deadly disease, we're simply saying that you have an irregular heartbeat."

"I guess telling her that I have something akin to super powers wouldn't convince her that I was okay, huh?" Oliver chuckled bitterly. He was always bitter when discussing the _Mirakuru._ Those wounds had never fully healed, but rather remained like raw scabs that could be opened again and again, never fully going away, never truly healed.

"Probably not," Sara admitted.

Oliver looked at her uneasily, eyebrows scrunched ever so slightly together. It was almost missable, but Sara had long since recognized it as a small nervous tick –similar to when he always tried to grab his bow even if it wasn't on him in uncomfortable situations- that meant that Oliver was struggling to find the words to say something, trying to plan it out before speaking.

"Doctor Lamb suggested that I wasn't as emotionally stable as I was physically stable." Oliver began slowly, as though the news would be less grievous if spoken slowly. "I had been alone with no one save one person for five years on a deserted island. And, because I acted so rashly, they think that I have formed an unhealthy attachment during my time away. They think my psyche tried to protect itself from insanity due to the isolation by latching onto the only other human being there and became obsessed."

Sara felt something jolt in her heart in a brief moment of panic and dismay.

 _"Me."_

Oliver didn't say anything for a few moments, but then he slowly nodded in confirmation.

"You."

There was a terrible silence as Sara tried to understand the implications while Oliver stared into her eyes, trying to gauge her reaction to the news.

"They want to separate us," Sara realized, a cold lump forming in her chest and spreading an icy tingle throughout her body. "Keep us apart." Her heart speed up at that, the ice cold terror freezing her limbs.

Keep them apart? Didn't anyone see the sheer idiocy of such a thing? She and Oliver- they were all they had, all they had was _each other._ For four years all they had had was one another; they were each other's comfort and anchor, someone that could be depended on and trusted whole-heartedly.

"They think our relationship is unhealthy," Oliver informed her, even as her hands clenched tightly against his own. "Maybe they think it'll prevent us from venturing out of whatever mental hole we've dug ourselves into. Lamb thinks that if I keep staying near you, I'll never try and reconnect with anyone when someone from such a horrible experience is around me."

Horrible experiences? If Doctor Lamb even knew what horrors they had gone through together. Ivo and his deadly choices… the freighter, the massacre of guards and prisoners alike, the predator strikes, nearly drowning…. Hong Kong and Amanda Waller, A.R.G.U.S., Chein Na Wei and the Triads, General Shrieve and the Alpha and Omega super-viruses… that alone had just been around a _year._ The other two were just as horrible; even they were separated for one year. How could anyone think that separation would help them now, when nothing truly could?

"He thinks that if I'm around, you'll never try to reconnect or form new attachments because I'm a constant reminder of everything bad that happened, and you'll metaphorically stick to me like gum on the sole of a shoe because I was all you had." Sara surmised, feeling an odd sense of calm, before her eyes narrowed ever so slightly. "Did he tell you this himself?"

Oliver shook his head, "No. He told my mother in the other room, but I could still hear him as though he was yelling in my ear." He grabbed his ear lobe and pulled at it as he gave her a wry smile, "I don't think my newfound and improved hearing showed up on the charts…" He suddenly winced, "Mom made me go through so many tests to make sure I was actually physically healthy. They put these stupid headsets on me and used different frequencies to determine if I had lost any hearing. Hurt like a _bitch,_ like someone was drilling in my head. My ears are still ringing…" he looked at her with a small little grin, "Remind me if we ever get a dog to never buy a dog whistle."

A laugh bubbled within Sara at Oliver's suggestion, despite the situation. "I think your mother would have some objections to us co-owning a dog when she wants to keep us apart for your mental health."

"Keeping you away from me is more destructive to my mental health."

Sara's laugh died at that, and she simply stared at Oliver who stared back. There was a sadness in his eyes- _his eyes are always sad,_ Sara thought- and the woman knew that Oliver was greatly unhappy with his mother and doctor's decision. "I love you." Oliver said, grasping her hands tightly in his own. He leaned over and kissed her, pulling her closer to his chest.

Their foreheads touched and the two lovers simply stared at one another. There were no words shared among them, but the two seemed to communicate simply through the silence. There was nothing to be said, but their eyes seemed to say the same thing: _I love you._

Oliver's arms wrapped around Sara's lithe form, pulling her closer to him as he leaned against the backboard of the hospital bed. There was no room for them to lie side by side, so Sara simply leaned against Oliver's chest, smiling contently as she kissed him.

For the first time since their separation at the hospital, the two survivors found themselves relaxing in each other's presence. The tension in their shoulders seemed to meld away, the worrisome creases in their foreheads smoothened, and the two were able to finally breathe comfortably now that they had one another, even if it was only for the night.

For the short time that they had, they could pretend that everything was right.

When the sun would start to rise in the horizon, Sara would have to leave Oliver's side to return to her room; she had been given a declaration of perfect health by the doctors earlier and was allowed to leave tomorrow with her family. Oliver would be leaving with his own family. It would have been good news had it not meant that the two would be separated, which was an unforeseen complication for them both. It would make everything be slowed down to a lull as Sara was with her own family and Oliver was with his own for his doctor's prescribed 'mental health'. _Dad probably wouldn't disagree with keeping us apart either… he's probably already trying to get a restraining order on Ollie._

Separation meant that meeting with one another during the day would be next to impossible unless they continued to sneak around their family's backs. It would be increasingly difficult, especially when they had only just returned home; neither of their family members would be keen to let Sara or Oliver out of their sights after getting them back from the grave, especially Moira and Quentin. This was a major setback, as it greatly restricted their communication; their only interactions with one another would be at night, when they could leave their homes without the prying eyes of family watching them.

A lump formed in her throat, swelling in size until it felt as though someone had wrapped their fingers around her throat and refused to let go. Had she had the ability to cry, Sara very well might have felt her eyes moisten; but she had lost the ability to shed tears long ago, when the old Sara died and the Canary was born. Still, her eyes burned.

Sara _hated_ separation.

Separation had never brought her any happiness. Separation had always been the reason for so much of the pain that had been inflicted upon her, Oliver, Slade and Shado in the past. Separation had nearly killed them because others hadn't trusted them when they were together, because they, the _outsiders,_ knew that together the four could do the impossible. Separation had caused so much heartbreak and turmoil that at the mere thought of leaving anyone's side –much less _Oliver's-_ made the woman balk.

They hadn't been separated for a long time. The last time had been two years ago, when Oliver had been forced back on Lian Yu to infiltrate a drug compound, and Sara had found herself in Afghanistan.

Sara didn't need any reflection to remember how badly that had gone.

"We'll get through this." Oliver tried to smile but found it impossible. He looked so grim as he stared at her, and Sara knew that a small piece of him was afraid.

 _He's scared of the Mirakuru,_ Sara thought somberly, fingers trailing across his cheek in an attempt to quell his fears. _He's always been scared of it, ever since that first moment that he became aware of it, when he became aware that it could control him. He won't admit it –he's too stubborn to- but he's afraid of slipping up and letting his family see him through the cracks of the armor he's placed around himself._

Sara could only hope that Oliver's hesitation would not lead to him ignoring his family members in some attempt of protecting them. She could understand why he could just ignore his family, and shelter himself away from them, but only if he had chosen to return and _not_ tell his family that he was alive. Oliver had decided to let the public and his family know that he was alive after all this time, and now he had to bear the consequences. He couldn't ignore his family, he couldn't hide himself away from them like some paranoid recluse; she wouldn't allow Oliver's fears of himself being a danger to others cause pain to those around him who had finally gotten him back, she wouldn't have them have Oliver back in their lives only to lose him all over again.

She leaned her head back against Oliver's chest, finding solace in the sound of his strong heartbeat. It was one of the most soothing sounds to the Lance daughter, who had fallen asleep to that sound for so long that it was almost a lullaby. Oliver's fingers idly traced random patterns on her shoulders, sometimes fiddling with bits of her blonde hair. "We'll be okay." She said. Sara didn't know if it was true, but she truly did hope so. She hoped to God or whatever celestial being that loved to torture them was giving them this one reprieve, this one moment in their lives that wouldn't backfire on them. She wanted this to be peaceful, without any fear for her and Oliver's wellbeing.

Sara just wanted things to work the way they wanted to.

But, as she had learned long ago, the things she wanted didn't come easily, and if they did come at all, they came with consequences.

Her eyelids felt so heavy, and she had to fight to flutter her eyes to remain open. Oliver's heartbeat had already begun to lull her to sleep, and Oliver's arms wrapped around her served as the perfect comfort. She leaned into his chest, nuzzling into his shirt as Oliver's fingers brushed away stray strands of hair; Sara looked up at him through half-lidded eyes and saw that Oliver's eyes were closed, a rare peaceful smile playing at his lips.

The thought of sleep usually didn't suit her very well- sleep meant vulnerability. It made her an easy target to those who wished her harm. But Oliver's presence put her at ease and reminded her that with him by her side, there was no need to remain vigilant for danger, because she was _safe._

Everything about Oliver radiated warmth and safety and love.

Sara felt drowsiness overcome her senses, and she remembered just how stressed and exhausted she truly was, but most of all she felt _safe._ "I love you," she murmured, her body pressed against his own. Oliver smiled, his eyes still closed, and Sara felt his arms tighten around her.

"Love you too." He murmured back.

She didn't remember falling asleep, didn't recall the moment where reality ebbed away and the world of dreams and illusions took over, but Sara Lance could easily remember the feeling of safety and security she felt, and a part of her knew that Oliver had felt and remembered it too.

 **End.**

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 **I'll admit I had a bit of trouble writing this chapter than I did with previous chapters. I don't know why but when I first wrote this, something felt off about my writing. When I tried to write the scenes it just didn't seem to work out. It just didn't** ** _click_** **, ya know? That's the main reason this chapter took so long to post; I just couldn't get it right. Hopefully you guys enjoyed this chapter however. I promise that the next chapter will come faster, and will focus on the perspectives of both Oliver and Sara.**


	3. Chapter 3

**Hey guys! First of all, I'm terribly sorry about this late chapter! The last portion of this chapter was extremely annoying to write and was the sole reason for why it took so long to update. Seriously, I think I spent more time writing that last piece than it took for the majority of the chapter. I went through way too many rewrites of the last piece and it was beyond frustrating. Although I will admit that I didn't spend as much time as I should have over winter break to write; I spent a good chunk of my time simply spending time with my sisters for some good ol' fashion sibling bonding.**

 **I also saw Star Wars a few times and am completely in love with the newest movie. I even wrote up a quick story that I actually posted a couple days ago, so if you liked the film you should go check it out (*shameless self-advertisement*).**

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The car ride, while not unpleasant, seemed rather uncomfortable to Sara. Although that might be because she was riding in the back of a police cruiser, her father and sister seated up front. Even though she knew that she was only sitting in the back was because that was the only available space, Sara still felt extremely uncomfortable.

 _I feel like I've been caught already, and I haven't even done anything yet._ Well, she had snuck away from her hospital room to sneak into Oliver's, but that wasn't technically illegal, more like frowned upon. _What a great run I had; I didn't even last a single night. Great job, Sara._

Okay, granted that she wasn't actually under arrest and was merely hitching a ride in a cop car that belonged to her father, but it was still _weird._

"You know," Laurel said, noticing how uncomfortable her sister was acting through the rearview mirror, "you're not under arrest." Besides her, Quentin snorted in amusement.

Sara shot a smirk at her elder sister and gestured at the metal bars separating them. "Can you blame me? Not really the welcoming parade I was expecting. At least you had the decency to not slap the cuffs on me."

Her father laughed at that, while Laurel allowed herself a small, barely noticeable smile that she tried to hide behind her hand.

 _Oh God, this is so weird._ Sara thought to herself.

Amused despite herself, Sara relaxed in the back of the car. It wasn't necessarily the most luxurious of car rides, she was sure that Oliver was enjoying himself in a far better and more comfortable car, but being in such close proximity with her family managed to wear down her iron walls just enough for the young woman to enjoy herself.

Feeling oddly content, though lonely without Oliver at her side, Sara stared out the window of the police cruiser. She tried to familiarize herself with the winding streets of Starling City, already planning ahead of how to best utilize them.

For several minutes, the car was engulfed in a comfortable silence. Everyone present simply content to be silent and enjoy the ride.

At least until Sara began to notice something. She hadn't been paying much attention earlier, being too caught up with her family and being in the back of a locked police cruiser, but, now that everything had begun to quiet down, she realized that the route they were taking towards home was not the normal route. In fact, she didn't recognize the streets at all.

"Aren't we going home?" Sara asked, breaking the comfortable silence. She stared out the window, looking at the unfamiliar streets and apartment complexes. Suddenly the once comfortable atmosphere seemed to drop several degrees until it became uncomfortably cold. She noticed that her father suddenly gripped the steering wheel tightly, while Laurel seemed to tense ever so slightly.

"We are." Quentin grunted out, looking rather nervous from the rearview mirror.

"But…" Sara leaned closer to the window, trying to remember if she had simply forgotten this area after being away so long. It didn't look familiar, and didn't resemble anything that would pinpoint how far away they were from their house. She glanced behind her, looking over her shoulder to see her mother driving behind them in a car she did not have five years ago. Why wasn't mom driving with them? There was enough room, and her mother had never needed her own car back before the Gambit for her job at the university. She had always taken the public transportation or dad would drop her off on the way to the precinct. When and why had she gotten a car?

"Home isn't this way," Sara mumbled, staring at her father and sister with unblinking eyes, searching for anything in the behavior of her father or older sister to confirm her growing suspicions.

There.

A ripple of unease on her father's face that was hidden by a clenched jaw. The tightening of Quentin's fingers wrapped around the steering wheel, his knuckles white from the strain. Laurel shifting in her seat, hand rising up to nervously brush away a strand of stray hair. All the subtle signs that spoke volumes to Sara that something just wasn't right.

"Dad?" Sara asked softly, leaning forward from the backseat. Her father looked straight ahead, eyes fixated on the road, his jaw clenched tightly. She turned her attention to her sister, who, like their father, refused to meet Sara's gaze, and instead stubbornly faced the road.

"Laurel?"

Her older sister bit her lower lip nervously, Laurel refused to look at her. It hurt her to see her family ignore her and to determinedly withhold information that was clearly something that Sara did not know but should.

Anger flared within her at the refusal to answer Sara's simple question, indignation burning within her heart at her silent family members that refused to speak. She had always _hated it_ when people actively tried to withhold information, especially when she was going to find out sooner or later. "Why aren't we going home?"

Laurel suddenly turned around in the front seat to look at her, and Sara saw the burning resentment that was smoldering within her eyes. Her sister was furious at her, and Sara knew the only reason they had yet to have their long awaited, and inevitable, confrontation about Oliver and the Queen's Gambit was simply because neither sister wanted that to be the first thing to occur when they saw each other for the first time in so long.

 _How long will that last?_ Sara thought hopelessly, knowing fully well that her sister had every right to be furious with her –to hate her- and that she had no excuse for what she had done. She had gone behind her sister's back and made such a huge mess of things. She had betrayed Laurel's trust.

And Laurel knew it.

The sisters stared at one another. Sara looked into Laurel's eyes and saw the anger, the resentment, the fury, contempt, betrayal and maybe even _hatred_ within her sister's eyes _._ Did Laurel hate her?

Sara understood if her sister did indeed hate her for everything that she had done. But it still hurt to see such anger and hurt in Laurel's eyes and know that Sara deserved it.

"This isn't the way home." Sara repeated again, sounding almost like a broken record, but nobody seemed to want to speak up. Her father and sister simply kept their heads forward, tension apparent in their tense shoulders.

By now, a feeling of dread had begun to creep up her spine at a snail's pace, slowly raising the girl's heartbeat and nerves with each passing second. She felt antsy in her seat, suddenly desperate to twitch and fidget as the uncomfortable tension continued to slowly drape itself around her, slowly driving her mad. She felt an odd sense of foreboding.

It was Laurel who spoke, voice tainted with faint hints of venom that came from five years of anger and betrayal.

"Home's not there anymore, Sara."

* * *

Queen's Manor hadn't changed in the last five years. It still smelled of aged mahogany and the faint smell of flowers. Magnolias still sat in the ornate vases at the entryway, his mother's favorite. Oliver remembered how his father would bring home a bouquet of them on every birthday and anniversary. The home still looked the same, with the same carpeting and paintings lining the hallways; it appeared as though nothing had changed since he had left it to board the Queen's Gambit five years ago. He didn't really count the last time he wandered the halls, back when he snuck away from Maseo and Waller to come home.

It didn't feel the same though.

Oh, everything seemed familiar. It was just as his memory served, Queen Manor hadn't changed in the five years he had been gone, his childhood home had remained the same, it was just Oliver who had changed. Queen Manor had served as a sanctuary in his mind, when trouble arose and Oliver found himself in constant danger, Queen Manor remained a bright spot in his mind, as the entire building had always been a safe haven for him; it was his home, after all.

But he didn't feel safe in it anymore.

This wasn't his home anymore. It had been _Ollie's_ ; the narcissist playboy that hadn't cared for anything, or anyone, but himself; the boy that had stumbled upon the shores of Lian Yu with his father's corpse draped across his shoulder. Ollie had died a long time ago.

And now the home felt foreign and strange. The memory of it tickled the back of his mind, phantom memories of safety and security taunting him. It was honestly driving him mad. The feeling of security felt so odd after so many years spent thinking that the next day might spell the end of both himself and his friends.

He felt like a stranger in his own home. When he walked through the hallways, he felt like an outsider, an unwelcome interloper. When his mother escorted him to his room, softly telling him that everything had remained the same, he felt as though he had entered the room of a dead man.

Bothered by his feelings towards a place he had always deemed as a safe haven, even after Ollie had died and Oliver was reborn, he had escaped from the prying eyes of his family, unable to deal with them. He couldn't look at them without feeling a strange sense of shame. He had fled to his old room and closed the door, heart thundering in his chest as a feeling of claustrophobia became apparent. He felt trapped. He hurried to the bathroom.

The shower proved to be capable of distracting Oliver from his bothersome thoughts. Turning the valve all the way, the water went from lukewarm to blistering within several seconds, slowly engulfing the bathroom in a warm mist. The glass fogged, separating him from reality. His skin reddened under the unrelenting pressure and heat of the water, but Oliver paid no mind.

The shower is large, big enough to hold more than one person. _Good,_ Oliver thinks to himself. _There is room to fight if the need arises._

The tiles were slick from water, the air slightly diluted from mist. Oliver thinks that will suit him well if someone were to sneak up on him. There was enough room to turn around, enough space to throw brutal punches or devastating kicks. _I can throw them against the wall, crush their head against the marble,_ Oliver thinks as he begins to wash his body with soap and continues to idly plot. _No one can grab me, they'll lose their grip and that's when I'll strike._

His bedroom is the bigger problem. It's wide and spacious, with wooden floors that creaked in certain places when stepped on. He could hear anyone trying to sneak up on him as he slept, but the windows unnerved him. _Too many windows, too many openings._ Someone could easily shoot at him from a high vantage point; there are too many windows, too many places that couldn't be defended. Despite being nearly indestructible, Oliver didn't particularly enjoy being shot at, especially with sniper rounds. Not to mention how difficult it would be trying to explain anything to his family.

Hanging his head down low, Oliver let the steaming water cascade down his broad shoulders, dripping down from his hair. His skin felt raw from the constant heat, but the warmth and pressure of the water made the tension in his muscles loosen ever so slightly. It was almost relaxing.

Idly, he wondered how Sara was doing.

Probably better than himself; he had fled to the confines of his room as soon as possible when things began to get uncomfortable at dinner. After so many years of wishing to see his family again, he had run from it. He didn't want his family to see how much he had changed. They expected him to still be the same after all these years, Thea was expecting to see her big brother again and his mother was expecting to see her son, Ollie.

Oliver was no coward by any means, but a part of him wondered if he was acting differently because of his reunion with his family. Was he being too emotional? Too careless? His thoughts were scattered and erratic, years of careful planning thrown aside by his rampant emotions. He wondered if he truly could act as someone he truly was not simply to reassure the people he had left behind that he hadn't changed, to let them think that he was still the same person.

He _wished_ he could be the Ollie they knew.

But Ollie had died a long time ago.

Oliver was simply was all that remained of that broken boy, now forged into something strong and different.

Head hung low, the man just stood in the shower, trying to comprehend everything. His head ached.

Turning the valve, Oliver turned off the shower as he stepped outside into the cool air. Quickly wrapping a towel around his waist, he slowly walked over to the mirror, wiping away the condensation that fogged it.

Seeing his body look so normal, so devoid of any burns or scars, was still something that took him aback, even after all these years. He still remembered his injuries, of being shot at, of being stabbed and kicked, of broken bones and torn muscles. And yet, there was no evidence of such events occurring. It bothered him.

All Oliver really had were tattoos.

Idly scratching at the runes emblazed upon the side of his abdomen, Oliver thought back to the pain of receiving them. Whatever John did had done the trick, as his 'gift' remained present on the man's skin despite his accelerated healing. He still didn't understand it though. Just the mere thought of John Constantine and the mystic world of the occult made Oliver's head spin.

With a sigh, the archer left his bathroom to change into new clothes. The thought of new clothes that weren't stained by sweat, grime or blood made Oliver positively giddy. It had been a long time since he had had clean clothes.

The clothes that he had worn to dinner were discarded to the side. Oliver had thought them too tight and starchy against his skin, and thus had quickly taken them off in his hurry to the bathroom. The dinner with his family still plagued his mind, however.

He had expected the questions. And there had been a lot of them. Too many questions and he had given few answers. Subtle questions, yes, as his family tried to probe deeper into the mystery that now surrounded him; they never asked him outright –as though asking so bluntly would shatter him like glass. They walked around him on eggshells, as though a simple prod would break him. They knew about his emotional outburst at the hospital; they thought he was still _recovering._

The lies came easy. He barely even noticed everything he told his family was a lie, or some misguided half-truth. He hadn't been lying to Thea when she asked him, shyly picking at her food with a fork, what Lian Yu had been like. It _had_ been cold.

It had also been painful, terrifying and full of so many hidden dangers. It had been the place that he had died, both metaphorically and physically, before he had been reborn into what he was now. It had been his hell and his salvation.

Thea and Tommy still seemed ignorant, too happy to have him back to second guess anything. They didn't see anything wrong with him. Tommy had even jokingly mentioned something about a t-shirt and Thea had chuckled at the notion. Everything was still normal for them.

His mother seemed to be the only one to pick up that something was different about him. It seemed as though she knew that the child she had lost hadn't truly come back home, but had been replaced with a stranger wearing her son's face. He was a different person now, someone much colder. He could see it in her eyes, eyes so much like his own but without such coldness, as she stared at him through half-lidded eyes, trying to be subtle in her search. Her eyes would roam his face, his unfamiliar face and new frown, and something would tighten around her eyes, and Oliver could see the pain in them.

Questions lingered behind those eyes. In everyone's eyes.

He could see it in their eyes. In Thea's and his mother's, in Tommy's eyes, in Raisa's eyes and even in Walter's. They all wondered the same thing; all of them thinking the same questions that none of them dared voice aloud.

 _Are you okay? Why are you so different? What happened after the Gambit? What happened to Robert? How does Sara play i all of this? How'd you survive? What was it like being away for so long? Did anything bad happen?_

 _What happened on that island?_

God, how he feared that last question. Too much had happened on Lian Yu; too much pain and too much hardship, too many deaths and too many failures. He couldn't answer with that, however.

So Oliver had deflected. He had talked about the _weather,_ as pathetic as that was. Because it had been cold on Lian Yu, so much that there had been nights that he had thought he would die from the icy bitterness that night brought. But the cold had not been the worse, it had been tame in comparison to what had really happened. But Thea and his mother didn't need to know that, they should never have to know that.

 _They can never know. Never._ Oliver thought to himself as he finished pulling on clothes that felt too starchy and clean and _wrong_ against his sensitive skin.

He turned his attention to the windows, noticing the darkness growing outside. Curious, he opened the window and breathed in the fresh air slowly. It tasted damp, tinged with electricity and dirt. A storm was coming. He could feel it in the stillness of the air. It hung around him like a wet blanket, dead and stagnant.

A storm was brewing; a big one. He could sense it.

He slammed the window shut and hurried over to the door that led out into the hall, turning the lock until he heard a click. He strode over to the bed and grabbed a blanket, bundling it up in his fist, before heading back towards the bathroom door. As he entered the bathroom, Oliver closed the door and locked it. Separated from the rest of the home's occupants by two locked doors, Oliver allowed himself to breathe slowly.

Everything was fine. He was locked in. Nobody could find him, and he couldn't get to them. The doors might be fragile to Oliver and his strength, but they served more as mental barriers than physical. To open those doors could mean endangering his family; the storm coming would only serve to unnerve him, make him emotional and weak to the _Mirakuru._

After all these years, the serum still cursed him. While he had caged the dark creature running through his veins, it still fought him and wrested for control. It wasn't tamed, it could never be tamed; it could only be held at bay. It lingered in the corners of his mind, its conscience tickling at his thoughts. He was no longer inexperienced and prone to falling under its control, but Oliver had come to respect and fear the power it harnessed.

Oliver wouldn't sleep tonight.

He didn't trust himself.

* * *

Her entire world shook.

With a start, Sara awoke, dazed and confused on where she was. There was no light, nothing but darkness.

There was a blinding flash of light followed quickly by an earth-shaking _boom_ that made her shriek, throwing up her hands to shield herself. Her confusion left her, replaced with dread as she recognized the sounds.

Artillery.

She recognized the thunderous booms of missiles hitting the ground, recognized the blinding white heat of the flames. She had experienced it before.

Panic overtook her, sending her heart rate up so fast that it threatened to beat out of her chest.

The shaking occurred again, brief for only a moment, and Sara threw herself to the ground, instinctively cowering as she wrapped her arms around her head. Her body twitched and shook, blankets once snuggly wrapped around her seemed to strangle her, ensnaring her like a net.

There was another flash of light, bright and sharp against her vulnerable eyes. It burned within her, its afterimage immortalized behind her eyelids.

 _Cr-ack!_

A terrible cracking sound split the sky in half. It was worse than the sound of snapped bone or of broken bodies. It was the sound of the world breaking.

She was falling, plummeting into nothingness. Light flashed around her, violent strikes of harsh warmth pressing against her. Something collided with her, making her head spin as looming metal walls closed in around her, seawater and brine dripping from loose cracks. She felt phantom fingers tightening around her throat, she heard gunshots echo and crack from far away. She saw bodies scattered like broken dolls, necks bent awkwardly and the terrifying feeling of something watching her. Its presence tickled the back of her neck, making the hairs raise and her body to shake, as she felt its gaze burn into her, a predator stalking its prey.

No. No. No.

Sara was trapped. Stuck within the never-ending metal halls that stunk of blood and decay. She tried to run, to hide away from the terrible lurker that hid behind the shadows, but with each corner she turned, with each hallway she passed, it kept up with her effortlessly. Sara felt the world shake and shudder, felt herself fall to the floor, and heard the sound of her world being torn apart as she was blinded by light and consumed in flames. And then suddenly she was falling into a dark void, yelling out into the nothingness.

She tried to breathe once her yells died down, but she could only cough and hack. Sara tried again, growing desperate, but her throat was clenched shut. The air was out of her grasp, too far gone to have. Her chest began to burn and her throat choked on nothing.

She couldn't breathe.

She couldn't breathe. She couldn't _breathe!_

Water suddenly enveloped her, dousing her body from head to toe and keeping her submerged, its coldness sending needles of pain and ice into her vulnerable body. She was still falling, slowly.

She was drowning.

Sinking.

 _Dying_.

She was dying, and she was alone.

Was she in the ocean? Back when the _Gambit_ sank or when the _Amazo_ was bombarded? Flashes of memory sprang to the forefront of her mind, nothing more than brief snippets of images of raging waves, bitter cold and overall helplessness. The phantom flashes of memories threatened to consume her, replacing reality with nightmares.

Someone was screaming. But it sounded so low and muffled, as though someone had sealed her ears with wax.

 _Who is screaming?_ Sara thought, even as her chest continued to burn for air and her body continued to grow colder and colder with each passing second. _Oliver? Slade? Shado?_ She called out to them with what little breath she still had, wasting precious air in an attempt to find her friends, but no one answered.

No one was near her. Were they gone? Dead? Lost like so many others? Where were they?

 _I don't want to die alone…._

A bright light suddenly flickered to life, washing away the darkness as fast as the flip of a switch. Sara jolted at the sudden brightness, smacking her head against something hard. Her head spun and ached. The cold murky water of the ocean was replaced with wooden planks, metal springs and fuzz. The underside of a bed.

When had she hidden under the bed?

When had she even been _in_ a bed?

Rushing feet came near her view from under the bed, and suddenly someone was crouching down besides her, hand outstretched as though to grab her. Instinctively, she backed away, her back pressed up against the wall.

Head still aching, Sara blinked up at the shadowy figure. It was hard to comprehend who was in front of her, even in such close proximity. Her mind screamed at her to kill the mysterious stranger, to snap its neck or beat it down until it never moved again, but her body was too frazzled, too confused to do anything but shake.

She saw dark eyes.

"… Slade?" Sara murmured softly, slowly reaching out towards the figure with dark eyes, her vision still blurry.

The blurriness faded away, revealing the figure's facial features. Sara let her hand fall limp when she realized that it was not Slade Wilson before her.

 _Dad?_

Hands suddenly grabbed her, trying to gently pull her away from the wall. Sara slapped them away, throwing herself back against the wall like a cornered animal. The world was still flashing before her eyes; memories mixing in with reality until Sara's vision seemed nothing more than a murky mix of memory and present.

"Sara?"

Her father's voice was shaky and soft; it sounded as though he was crying. Cracking one of her eyes open, Sara saw her father kneeling at the edge of the bed, peering at her with wide eyes.

"Sara, baby, what's going on? You, you were screaming and crying." Her father's eyes were bloodshot and his voice was watery. "Did you have a nightmare?" He sounded so concerned, as though she was five again and scared of the dark. But his eyes betrayed him; he knew something was terribly wrong, that something had caused his youngest daughter to wake up in the middle of the night screaming herself hoarse while cowering under the bed as though the sky was raining down missiles and believed herself to be drowning.

She choked on a humorless laugh. Nothing seemed really funny to her at the moment.

The world shook again. Only now did Sara realize that it had been thunder, rather than the sound of artillery. Shame crept up, tinting her cheeks red with embarrassment.

"I'm sorry…" She must have terrified her father. He wouldn't forget this. "I'm so sorry."

"It's okay, Sara." Her father was whispering to her softly as though she was a little girl again. He was trying to comfort her, even when his eyes betrayed his terror and confusion. "I'm right here. You're safe, sweetie. You're _home._ "

"Stay away from me, daddy." She curled herself into a ball, tucking her knees against her chest and wrapped her arms around them. "I don't want to hurt you…"

 _I'm dangerous._

Quentin didn't answer. His jaw was clenched tight and his hands seemed to shake. Sara wondered how long he had been in the room. How long had he heard her screams?

"I can't leave." Quentin said with a tight smile, "My daughter needs me." He reached out to her, slowly, as though the mere action might scare her.

She shrunk away.

Quentin pulled his hand away; a look of pure agony wretched across his grizzled face.

"I'll just stay right here with you." Quentin shifted until he was in a comfortable position, politely keeping his distance from Sara's curled form. "No one is going to hurt you, sweetie. I won't let them." Something dark flashed between his eyes, and Sara wondered what he was thinking.

The storm had slowed down by now. Its once torrential rains now nothing more than soft drizzles. The lightning was gone; the thunder was silenced. The danger had passed.

A chill had come in the room, brought in by the open door. Sara shivered slightly, bundling herself up in the tangle of blankets as though to shield her from the outside. "Daddy?" Sara whispered, still hidden under the bed.

There was the sound of creaking wood as her father shifted from his silent vigil. "Yeah?"

Her mouth felt dry and her throat felt raw, as though someone had taken sandpaper to it. "I don't wanna be left alone…" the words sounded pathetic, too emotional for Sara to truly understand. But it wasn't Sara that was speaking, it wasn't the Canary cowering under a bed from phantom explosions; it was Sara Lance, the daughter who had her father back, that was speaking.

A sound reminiscent was a sharp intake of breath came from her father, sounding almost like a choked gasp. "You aren't alone, Sara. I'm right here. I ain't leaving. Not now, not ever."

His words comforted her. They made her feel safe; something she rarely felt when she wasn't with Oliver.

Slowly, Sara reached her hand out to grasp onto Quentin's own. Her father made a sound that sounded almost like a sob, and his fingers wrapped themselves around her smaller hand, fingers stroking at old scars and rough callouses. His touch was soft and gentle. Calming.

Her heartbeat seemed to slow down, her nerves became less frazzled, her fear slowly replaced by exhaustion. The phantom flashes of memories were gone, the feeling of drowning no longer present, the sensation of dying all but forgotten. Tomorrow would bring hardship and unwanted questions that Sara didn't want to answer, but for now Sara simply allowed herself the small privilege of enjoying her father's comforting presence.

 _I hate storms…_


	4. Chapter 4

**I have a little side-note/shameless self-advertisement, I've written a new story that focuses on the newest Star Wars movie, so if anyone is a fan of the films I recommend reading it!**

* * *

Queen Industrial Inc. Steel Fabrication and Welding.

An old factory that was nestled within the Glades, surrounded by high link-fences and barbed wire; it was abandoned now, its workers long since laid off. Oliver wondered if any of those homeless bums huddled around the fire can at the corner had once been employed there. The factory had supplied a lot of employment for the people of the Glades, before his father shut it down.

" _I didn't help this city. I failed it!"_

"So, what did you miss the most?" Tommy Merlyn, his once best friend from before Lian Yu, asked him, hands gripped loosely on the steering wheel. "Steaks at the palm? Drinks at the station?" Tommy shot him a smug grin, showing off bright white teeth, "Meaningless sex?"

Without returning the smile; Oliver just stared out the window at the factory. "My family."

The smug grin was gone, replaced with a softer, more genuine smile. "Everyone is happy you're alive."

There was a feeling of warmth that blossomed in his chest at Tommy's words. Phantom memories of his old life flickered to mind, the edges fuzzy and the sounds almost muted. He remembered the times from before. The memories made him smile slightly, barely noticeable but genuine. But then it was gone, fading away so quickly one might have thought that it hadn't been there at all. Oliver could name quite a few people who wouldn't be overjoyed with his survival. "Not everyone." Oliver replied.

Tommy gave a very noticeable wince from the driver's seat. He drummed his fingers against the wheel nervously, tapping quickly to some unknown beat. A nervous tick.

There was a moment of awkward silence between them.

"Laurel?" Tommy finally asked, resigned.

"Laurel."

Tommy sighed wearily, but he turned the corner and started to drive in a new direction, possibly to the current location of one Dinah Laurel Lance. The atmosphere in the car was silent and tense, with Tommy too anxious to talk and Oliver simply too caught up in his thoughts to force small talk.

It has been years since he had seen Laurel Lance up close.

He had spied her a few times two years ago, back during his early A.R.G.U.S. days. Laurel had been at Tommy's party, had been there when Oliver killed that crooked drug dealer that had sold his little sisters pills.

Laurel had never realized that the sister and boyfriend she thought dead had been lurking in the shadows, so close and yet so far away. Neither of them had felt inclined to reveal themselves for fear of Waller's wrath. Amanda would have killed both of their families without hesitation, though she would have made it appear accidental, without any leads to her. Suicide, an accidental overdose, a drunk driver hitting them in the streets, a desperate mugger with a gun.

Amanda was cruel like that.

But now that they were free from A.R.G.U.S. and in the public eye, Oliver found himself drawn to the idea of finding Laurel. He didn't really know why, but he felt a terrible urge to go to Laurel and ask her for forgiveness, to have her blame him and not Sara.

When was the last time he had even talked to her? Was it when they were lounging on the couch, Laurel chatting about law school and a shared apartment while he sat there awkwardly?

It had been so long ago. Back when the scariest thing in his life was commitment and shared drawer space.

It all seemed so silly now.

Tommy was looking at him from the corner of his eyes, biting down on his lip. "She won't be thrilled to see you, you know that right?"

He shrugged casually. "She probably hates me, but I still have to see her."

"To apologize?"

"I don't know, Tommy. I guess."

The Merlyn heir nodded his head, grimacing slightly. "Alright, well it was nice knowing you, Mr. Oliver Queen." He said solemnly, holding out his hand for a somber handshake. "I'll mourn you at your second funeral."

"Just drive, Tommy."

* * *

There was a corkboard plastered with pictures of Adam Hunt and various newspaper clippings. It even had bits of yarn connecting things together, like a half-finished jigsaw puzzle. Curious, Oliver took a step forward and inspected the board, reading the various headlines to the articles that depicted Hunt's nefarious, but unproven, nature. The name was familiar to him; it was written in the List. Was Laurel going after Adam Hunt?

He could hear Laurel speaking to someone, her voice sticking out against the relentless drone of sound that so often became white noise to Oliver. He looked up from the board, jaw clenched as he searched for her.

And then, suddenly, there she was.

Laurel Lance.

Still well dressed with that same prim and proper look to her, still elegant, still familiar, and still beautiful. She hadn't changed.

His heart twisted painfully in his chest as he stared while Laurel paused mid-step, rooted to the ground, as she stared at him in shock with wide eyes and a slightly hung jaw.

Lips pressed together tightly in neither a smile nor a frown, Oliver dipped his head in greeting. "Hello, Laurel."

He had to admit, that even when so greatly shocked and looking as though she had been punched in the face, it was admirable of how quickly she composed herself.

People around them were staring at them, staring at him. He knew that they knew who he was; his face was plastered all over the papers and news stations after all. He wondered what they knew about him, if Laurel had ever said anything about it or if all they knew came from the papers and tabloids. He hated their stares.

Laurel still hadn't said anything. She looked frozen in time, feet melded to the worn carpet. The woman besides her, a pretty dark-skinned woman, kept glancing from Laurel to Oliver, clearly torn on what to do.

"Can we talk?" He eyed the people that were not so subtly starting at them. "Maybe in private?"

Laurel nodded her head silently, so Oliver quickly turned around and headed back towards the entrance to the law firm, passing by a grim-faced Tommy who stared at Laurel with an expression that looked positively uncomfortable. The two shared a look, an unknown conversation quickly passing between them that Oliver couldn't understand.

He grabbed the door handle, pulling it open and stepping aside for Laurel to exit. She passed through quickly, still not speaking.

The two walked together in an uncomfortable silence.

Oliver kept his gaze ahead, staring at what was in front of him, but he occasionally peaked from the corner of his eyes to look at Sara's older sister. Laurel wasn't looking at him either; instead she just stared straight ahead as though he wasn't even there. Oliver saw her jaw was clenched tight, a telltale sign of anger.

Oliver decided to be the first to speak. "How's Sara doing? Has she adjusted well?"

Laurel's quiet laugh at his words sounded more like a choke. "That's what you came all the way here for? Is that really all you have to say? All you care about? My little sister?" Her words were biting, full of a poison nurtured by years of constant resentment.

He ducked his head down, unable to answer for several moments. "No, that's not all I have to say. I wanted to… wanted to…" he cleared his throat uncomfortably. The air was tense between them, so thick that it felt as though he were about to suffocate. He couldn't finish his words, so he kept walking alongside her, eyes glued to the pavement in a rare form of cowardice.

"Why are you here, Ollie?" Laurel asked him, her voice reserved and guarded, as though he might jump at her. "Why are you really here?"

Tearing his eyes from the ground, Oliver stared at the woman he had wronged. "I wanted to apologize. It… it was my fault. Blame me for everything that happened, blame me for the pain we caused. Don't blame Sara for my mistakes, for my regrets."

Laurel didn't answer. She just stared at him, her eyes burning into his soul as he saw the confliction in her eyes. He saw so many emotions warring within her, tearing her apart. "I tried to mourn you." Laurel admitted, her voice shaky and her eyes swarming with tears. "I really did. I tried to forgive you because you died, just like how I forgave Sara."

"I-"

"She's my _sister,_ Ollie!" Laurel hissed out. "I forgave her when I heard she died, because how could I blame her for falling under your charm like I did? But I never forgave you, not when I thought you died and not now when I found out you weren't." Her face turned cold, her frown turning bitter. "That's what happens when you find out your boyfriend supposedly died while screwing your sister."

He winced at the well-founded accusations as though they had been actual physical blows. Her words stung deep, rubbing raw old internal wounds and memories. Despite the pain he felt, Oliver kept his face impassive as the two former lovers continued to walk.

"And now that you know Sara is alive?" He pressed on.

 _Have you forgiven her?_

Laurel lurched backwards, conflicted. So many emotions passed through her eyes that Oliver couldn't decipher what her true feelings were on the subject. Her jaw was clenched and her hands had curled into shaky fists.

"It's none of your business now." Her reply was terse and clipped, with no further explanation.

Oliver let it rest, not wanting to continue provoking the woman before him. He tried to ignore how Laurel hadn't answered if she forgave her sister or still blamed her.

They continued walking. The tension between them seemed to become even more constricted.

Oliver spoke softly, his voice almost a whisper and barely audible. "I'm sorry, Laurel…" Regret hung heavy in his tone; his face solemn and shadowed as he stared at her. There was a pain in his chest coiling within him like a snake, sharp and burning. There had been hope, however miniscule and unlikely it would be, that Laurel could have found it within herself to forgive him for his mistakes. But now he knew that she hadn't forgotten, and wouldn't forgive him. He deserved it, but it still stung. "I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry too." Laurel said, voice dripping with derision. "I had hoped that you'd have rot in hell for a lot longer than five years."

Oliver flinched as though he had been struck.

Laurel felt a surge of dark satisfaction run through her as she saw the hurt in Oliver's eyes. _Good,_ she thought to herself. _Let him know how it feels._

She stepped up close to him, glaring up into his bright blue eyes and jabbed her finger against his firm chest angrily. "Stay away from my family, Oliver." Laurel whirled around and walked briskly back to her workplace.

Oliver watched her storm away with a frown. "Laurel." He called out. Laurel stopped, turning her head slightly to look at him from over her shoulder. Her eyes were watery from barely contained tears.

He stared at her, trying to remember what it had felt like when he had thought he loved her. He didn't feel anything. He just felt cold. And sad.

"Be careful of Adam Hunt."

And with that warning said and done, Oliver turned around and walked away from Laurel Lance. Tommy, who had been skulking near the edge of his sight watching them with his knuckles pressed against his teeth, said something to Laurel that Oliver didn't even bother listening in on.

"Ollie, wait up!" Tommy called out, hurrying his steps to catch up to him. The Merlyn fell in besides his friend, breathing a bit heavily. Clasping Oliver on the shoulder and looking suitably understandingly morose about the situation, Tommy led them both back towards the alleyway, chatting aimlessly in a futile attempt to raise Oliver's spirits.

It was only when Tommy had started some tirade about supermodels with long legs and eating sushi that Oliver heard something that made him pause. The sound of squealing tires as a car suddenly stopped nearby. Tommy cried out angrily as a van suddenly appeared behind them, almost hitting them before it had stopped. Oliver didn't really pay attention to Tommy's irritable words, all he could notice how the van was large enough to block the entrance to the alley.

Tommy was still yelling. "Watch where you-"

There was the sound of a silenced pistol. A sharp puff of released air. Something struck his neck, embedding itself in his skin. It felt like a bee sting,

Tommy suddenly lurched back as though something had hit him in the shoulder, and then he crumbled to the ground in a graceless heap.

Suddenly doozy, as though all the blood had rushed to his head, Oliver grabbed whatever was in his neck and pulled it out. It was a metal dart, wickedly sharp and with an empty syringe.

 _Tranquilizer._

A very strong one if Tommy's immediate state of unconsciousness was anything to go by. Even Oliver himself felt the effects, a brief instant of terrible weariness before the Mirakuru started to eradicate it from his bloodstream _._

Suddenly a couple men armed with rifles swarmed his vision, each one wearing a mask. They rushed at him with military-grade weaponry, aiming their sights down at the unconscious Tommy and the still standing Oliver.

People were yelling, screaming so loudly it made his ears ring. Ghoulish masks blurred in his vision as Oliver struggled to shake off the remaining effects of the tranquilizers. He steadied himself against Tommy's car, his mind already processing an acceptable course of action.

One of the men tried to hit him in the head with the butt of his gun. Oliver noticed it immediately, as though the man was moving through molasses: moving, but moving so slowly it was comically slow-mo. With an almost lazy quick grab,, the gun was tugged out of the man's grip. The man made a strangled sound in shock, a mix between a grunt and gasp.

With no remorse, Oliver smacked the man in the face with the weapon. He felt the man's nose break under the contact, and could hear the faint sound of cartilage cracking as the man howled in pain.

Acting quickly, Oliver threw the gun at the closest gunman that had his weapon trained on him. It struck the thug in the shoulder, and the man stumbled back. Oliver darted to the side of the car as both tranquilizer darts and bullets bounced off the brick and metal, only narrowly missing him.

If there was one thing Oliver loved about his enhanced form, it was being able to usually duck out of the way from bullets if he reacted fast enough. Regular bullets didn't necessarily prove to be fatal to him, but they still _hurt._ It was like being hit with a hammer with the pain of a wasp sting. Not enjoyable.

Tommy was still unconscious, strewn across the filthy concrete like a limp ragdoll. There was the faint movement of his chest, indicating that he was breathing and still alive. But the fact that gun-totting masked gunmen surrounded Tommy Merlyn made the situation rather tense.

 _Damn it,_ Oliver thought to himself as he hid behind the car. He was pinned down, the exit having been cut off by the van and the other side of the alleyway littered with gun-totting masked goons. He couldn't simply run away, not without Tommy. But was it worth getting into a fight with these unknown attackers? _I'm supposed to be laying low and not bringing attention to myself, god damn it!_

The world always did seem to like to screw with him.

"Mr. Queen!" One of the gunmen yelled out. There was a pause in gunfire as the attackers formed a semi-circle around Tommy's car. "Come out here, now!"

Oliver, naturally, stayed where he was. "You better not have hit the car." Oliver called out. "My friend likes this car." _Not to mention how in the world_ _will I explain this to Tommy if there are bullet holes in his car?_

The sound of boots hitting the tarmac got louder as the men slowly advanced, their guns aimed on the car. Oliver wondered which guns had tranquilizer darts and the other had bullets. They wanted him alive, that he knew, or they would have shot him with a bullet rather than a tranq. Kidnappers looking for a hefty ransom by kidnapping two billionaires? If they were, they wouldn't want to kill him. He could use that to his advantage.

Looking around quickly, Oliver began to form a plan as he looked for anything he could use to help him. "I'm going to give you one chance. You can lay down your firearms and walk away from this unscathed, or I can beat you from here to kingdom come." He yelled out from behind the car, trying to stall. He saw a small chunk of stone the size of his index finger, possibly from the brickwork or a piece of broken concrete. He grabbed it and crouched besides the wheel, keeping his head down.

The attackers were laughing, obviously amused at Oliver's ultimatum. To them, he was just a spoilt billionaire who just happened to be lucky enough to survive on an island. They didn't know that they had wandered into a dark cave and poked the bear.

Oliver couldn't simply wait this out. Even though there had been several gunshots, they were still technically in the Glades. Nobody would call in the noise, not when it was such a common occurrence. And there was also the fact that the police might not even respond if someone even did call in, depending on who answered the call. It was the Glades. Gunshots happened all the time. It wasn't worth the effort to most of Starling City's finest.

"Guess you guys chose the latter." Oliver grumbled to himself, before standing up and exposing the top of his body to the attackers. Acting quickly, Oliver threw the bit of stone at a random gunman, his arm moving so fast that it blurred. There was a soft _whiiip,_ as the stone flew through the air with the force of a bullet before impaling itself in the man's shoulder. The man howled in pain, dropping his weapon as his hand leapt towards the wound instinctively. Falling to his knees, the man clutched at his shoulder, still screaming as blood trailed down his worn shirt in steady rivulets. The others all backed away, looking at one another in shock and confusion as though to confirm that that had just happened.

Oliver took their confusion to his advantage and leapt over the hood of the car, sprinting towards the armed men without any hesitation. Jumping up high, Oliver raised his fist and slammed it into the wounded man's face. He felt the jaw splinter against his knuckles, as blood, saliva and bits of teeth flew out of the man's mouth. Another punch to the man's temple and the man crashed into the ground, the side of his head slightly sunken in.

Someone yelled again, a new voice. Oliver glanced up and saw what looked like a civilian worker, a chef maybe, braced against an open door with a bag of trash in one hand. The man looked terrified as the gunmen turned towards him.

A man in a red devil mask raised his gun and shot off several rounds. The bullets slammed into the man, who lurched back from the blow. Crimson red blossomed against the whiteness of his shirt. The civilian, an innocent, fell against the brick wall and slowly slunk down, dead.

Oliver saw _red._

Something within Oliver snapped. It was as though chains that had kept him dormant were broken. Within him, an old power that he had long restrained suddenly awoke. White-hot hatred flared within him, eradicating any sense of reasoning from his mind.

Unleashing a savage roar that didn't sound human, Oliver launched himself over the man's body and tackled the closest attacker. The man went down, the gun knocked out of his hands, and Oliver began to mercilessly punch him. Each hit of a fist brought forth a sickening cracking sound as ribs were broken, the man was shrieking in agony as his comrades yelled in alarm. Someone took a single shot on him, aiming for the shoulder; it stung momentarily, but Oliver barely noticed it in his rage. It did, however, bring him back to awareness of the other men.

Placing a single hand against the man's throat, his fingers wrapping around the vulnerable spot, Oliver simply _squeezed._ With a snap, the masked man's neck jutted out at an odd angle, broken.

"Holy shit!" One of the masked men cried out in alarm, his voice cracking.

Oliver leapt at the one who spoke. To the goons, it was as though the man had teleported five feet in the span of a single second. One second, the target was crouched over the broken body of their comrade, and the next he had appeared by another several meters away. Oliver rammed his shoulder against the speaker, launching him against the brick wall. The man bounced off, leaving a few small cracks against the brickwork.

Hauling the man to his feet, Oliver pressed his palm against the man's chest quickly, slowly crushing the man's ribcage with concentrated pressure. The man was screaming, begging for him to stop. Oliver slammed the man's head against the brick, and the goon fell silent.

The rest were panicking now. They had seen the unbelievable, and they were terrified of it. They skirted around him nervously, looking torn between the decision of fight or flight.

A man decided to fight, rushing at him with a Taser. He swung it wildly, holding it as though it were a knife. Oliver backed away as the man advanced, quickly swinging his body out of the way of the electrified weapon. The man tried a quick jab, but Oliver pivoted his feet and swung around it. Then he paused, waiting.

The thug rebounded and leapt at him from behind, wrapping his arms around Oliver's neck as he desperately struck Oliver with the Taser, keeping it in place.

There was the smell of ozone and burnt flesh as the Taser burned a hole in his shirt. The attacker must have turned up the charge dramatically.

Oliver grabbed ahold of the man's shoulders, scowling. "I liked that shirt!" He threw the man across the alleyway as though he weighed nothing, where he skidded several feet across the tarmac.

Picking up the Taser with a scowl, Oliver turned it over in his hands. He had, ironically, never used a Taser before. He also didn't feel in the mood to learn the best way to wield it.

So he threw it.

It hit someone square in the forehead, though the part that hit him was the hilt rather than the actual bit that was electrified. Pity. The man dropped like a bag of bricks, his skull slightly caved in from the force.

The last remaining thug threw away his useless gun and started to sprint down the alleyway, trying to escape.

"Oh no you don't!" Oliver snarled as he tore after him, his shoes slapping against the tarmac as he gained speed.

He tackled the man, both of them rolling on the ground for a few moments before Oliver righted himself and hauled both himself and the struggling man to their feet. The man tried to break free, twisting his body frantically, but Oliver had an iron grip.

"You killed that man," Oliver accused the masked man, holding him in a tight chokehold.

The gunman choked under the pressure, gloved fingers desperately clawing at Oliver's forearms in a futile attempt to rip himself free from the man's grasp. "Y-You don't have to do this." He begged, his eyes pleading and terrified.

"Yes I do." Oliver told him, his voice almost a soft whisper, barely audible. The man's eyes, hidden behind the red mask, were fearful. He knew what was going to happen, but couldn't accept it and could only fear. "No one can know my secret." Without breaking eye contact, Oliver broke the man's neck and let the body fall to the ground in a heap.

His breathing slightly labored, Oliver glanced around him. All the attackers were dead, their bodies strewn about the ground like broken dolls. He stepped over the body of the man in the red devil mask and walked over towards the unconscious Tommy, easily hefting the man onto his shoulder. He carried the knocked out man over to the car and placed him in the passenger's seat, making sure to strap on the seat belt. For safety.

"Let's hope you don't remember any of this, Tommy." Oliver spoke casually to his unconscious passenger as he hopped into the driver's seat, turning the key in the ignition. "It'd be better for all of us if you forgot this." He started to drive away in the opposite direction, away from the blocked entrance. "I'm supposed to be staying low before my big debut." His nerves were getting the better of him, and thus he became chatty. Luckily Tommy was unconscious and thus was a great venting target.

 _Those men were after me. Me, as in Oliver Queen._ Oliver thought, starting to brood as he turned onto a busy street. _Nobody knows my true agenda aside from Sara and a select few, and none of them would betray me. Everyone is assuming I'm still the same old Ollie Queen. Was it Waller? No… she wouldn't send men who didn't know about what I could do. The gunmen were too sloppy, too trigger-happy. They weren't A.R.G.U.S, so who is after me?_

Oliver groaned as he came to a sudden realization. He slunk back into the leather, the back of his head banging against the seat.

"Sara is going to be _pissed_."


	5. Chapter 5

_Bzzz. Bzzz. Bzzz._

Her father's phone rattled against the scuffed wood of the dinner table, its loud vibrations breaking the silence.

"Sorry, sweetie, it's work." Her father looked rather apologetic, as though he wanted nothing more than to ignore the phone. However, he picked it up. Sara kept staring at her food, prodding the cold remains of half-burnt lasagna with her fork.

"What?" Quentin barked into the phone, ready to chew out whoever thought it would be a good idea to call him when he had taken leave to spend time with his daughter. The sharpness in his voice softened. "Hilton?"

Sara watched as the annoyance on her father's face melted away almost instantaneously, only to be replaced with worry. Suddenly her father appeared to age almost a decade. The gray around his temples even more apparent while the worry lines etched across his forehead creased. Her father stood up, accidently knocking over his chair as he hurried to grab his coat and badge, gruffly barking into the phone.

"I'll be right there, make sure none of the boys touch anything until forensics show, got it? And send someone over to check on Laurel- yeah, _I know_ that, but still do it. She works only a block over."

Sara watched as her father pinned his police badge to his chest, his gun already holstered against his hip. It was standard issue; all policemen had one. Her throat clenched.

All of a sudden, her father had transformed before her very eyes. Gone was the concerned father who had tried, and mostly failed, to cook her favorite lasagna dish, and was instead replaced with Detective Lance, the policeman.

This was the side of her father to avoid at all costs…

It was rather terrible in Sara's opinion that, in some odd way, her own father was her enemy. She and Oliver had both agreed that the SCPD would not be of help to them, but rather obstacles in their path for justice.

 _You don't need to go outside the law to find justice._

That was what the man before her- the one who had raised her, the one who had loved her, and mourned her- had always told her. He had told her this with a badge on his chest and a gun at his hip, because he was a shield and protector to both her and the civilians of Starling City.

Only now he was her father and enemy at the same time.

The very thought of it made Sara's insides squirm. Would she ever face her father when she wore her mask? Was she even capable of doing what she knew was right when she knew her father thought it wrong?

 _No. I won't let that get in the way,_ Sara thought to herself crossly, barely paying attention as her father hurried out of the door. _Dad's ideals are not mine anymore. I can't let him, or anything, get in my way. My family can't be… isn't… important._

The thought stung. She had spent so many years wishing to be back home, to reunite with her family and have everything go back to the way it was. Only that never really happened.

Oh, she was with her mother, father and sister again, but the family she had lost five years ago was still gone. Because, despite her father's best efforts, Sara had finally begun to piece together the mystery. Prodding her mother with subtle questions, paying attention to her father arguing with her mother over the phone about living and visiting rights, Laurel's silent treatment… she had figured it out.

Her parents were separated.

The simple reason why she, Laurel and their father hadn't gone back to Sara's childhood home because her family no longer lived in it, because her old home was _gone,_ had hurt worse than she had expected. Her family had broken apart in her absence, and Sara didn't know if it would ever be whole again.

And the worst thing about it?

 _It was all her fault._

She had broken their family apart with her lies and deceit.

Her parents were separated.

Her mother had a new teaching job, new co-workers, new friends and a new life in Central City. Her father had moved out of their old home into the smaller, slightly dirty apartment that she currently called home. Laurel had gotten out of the equation as soon as possible, ignoring the civil war between her parents in favor of her studies and profession. Quentin had become an alcoholic and spent the past few years brewing in a bitter rage.

And it was all Sara's fault.

 _It's all my fault,_ Sara thought to herself in the emptiness of the kitchen. _I did this. I broke my family apart._

"I'm sorry…" the words escaped from her lips, softly spoken but still deafeningly loud in the empty kitchen.The silence unnerved her, and seemed thunderous in its quietness. Before, as her father surrounded her senses, she had wanted to be left alone to her own devices, to let herself think. Only now did she realize that being alone wasn't what she truly needed.

Alone time meant thinking. Thinking meant realizing that she had destroyed her family. Realizing meant that the life she had dreamed of, had agonized over, had so desperately wished back was no more. That dream was _gone_. There was no more wishing, her hopes and dreams had been destroyed cruelly by reality.

Shame burned in her veins, filling her entire body with self-loathing because it was her fault _,_ her fault, her fault, all her fault,

Her actions: her scheming, her lying, her running away and her death were the direct causes of all the pain that her family had suffered.

 _It was her fault._

She had to get out. She had to get out of this apartment, away from her mother and father and sister. She couldn't face them, not when she was too much of a coward.

Sara leapt from her chair, barely holding back a frustrated scream, and bolted for her room.

She reached under the bed, trying to find her munitions trunk with all of her stuff. Where was-

… It wasn't there….

"Damn it!" She swore violently, kicking the side of her bed. She had given her munitions box to Oliver for safekeeping, because she didn't trust her family to not be even the slightest bit curious to know what Sara had brought back with her. Her father was a detective and her sister was a lawyer, there was no way in hell that they wouldn't be nosy.

Unfortunately that meant that Sara didn't have any of her possessions. No weapons, no mask, no suit. Nothing.

Well, shit. That meant she had be a little unorthodox. At least it was doable.

Rummaging through her drawers, Sara grabbed what little clothing her father had managed to procure throughout the chaos of her return. Luckily, she found a gray long-sleeved shirt, and quickly switched tops while remaining in her black sweatpants. Running to her father's room and looking through his closet, she found an old hoodie that, while a bit too baggy, was dark enough for her tastes.

There was a window in the very back of the apartment that led to a fire escape. Sara dropped down to the street, shying away from the streetlamps. Sara Lance disappeared from her home, melding into the growing darkness of dusk.

She took a cab by shoving a bunch of bills in the man's face with the order to drop her off in the middle of the Glades. She didn't specify where exactly, because she honestly didn't have a plan. Luckily the cabbie just shrugged off his curiously as Sara handed him a few more bills to keep his silence and lurked in the back. Her brooding silence and prickling attitude served as a buffer against any small talk.

By the time the cab wheeled to a stop and she got out of the car, the streetlights had already flickered on. Keeping her clenched fists pressed against the folds of her sweatshirt's pocket, Sara walked into a random direction, keeping her head down but kept her eyes and ears open for any trouble.

Like a bloodhound hungered for the taste of its prey, Sara prowled the rundown streets of the most dangerous area of Starling City in search of anything to rid herself of her anger. Eventually, she found herself a target.

Three muggers in an alleyway. One with a gun, two with knives. One of them was holding a struggling woman still, pressing the serrated edge of wicked sharp metal against her neck, while his companions grabbed her bag and valuables. The woman was crying, her body trembled as the men laughed.

"Hey!"

The three men turned to her. The one with the gun seemed about to aim the pistol at her, but lowered it when he caught sight of her in the light. While covered head to toe in dark clothing, her face hidden in the harsh shadows of the artificial lighting, it was obvious by her blonde hair and lithe form that she was a girl.

"You tryin' to play hero, missy?" One asked with a sneer, confidently twirling his knife.

Sara could smell the alcohol on their breath. Drunks. Easy to deal with, despite being armed. There was something about drinking that gave a boost in one's confidence and ego; instant arrogance that could be used to her advantage.

"I'm not playing. Let her go now, or I'll break your kneecaps before I break your neck." Sara warned, already settling into a defensive stance. One foot forward, one foot backward; arms held up loosely, ready to block or strike at a moment's notice.

They laughed again, loud and confident. The booze in their system was in full effect; Sara could see the slight unsteadiness of the one with the knife on the right, though he wasn't swaying. The three were just drunk enough to throw away their morals and common sense, but not enough that they were passed out in the street retching up bile. They could still put up a fight, however laughably terrible it would be in comparison to Sara's past foes. Still, she wouldn't underestimate them.

Instead, she would let them underestimate her.

"You shouldn't play hero, miss. It'll get ya hurt." The one with the knife against the woman's throat jerked his head at one of them, who stepped towards Sara with a grin. It was the one with the gun.

Sara let him come close, until the cold metal of the barrel was pressed against her forehead. "Now, what was that about breaking our kneecaps and necks, hmm?" The thug asked. Sara flinched at the pungent smell of alcohol, but the man assumed it was from fear. His grip on the gun loosened, more relaxed. He thought himself in control of the situation. "On your knees, bitch."

Sara's eye twitched dangerously. "What did you say?" She asked him, her voice a cold whisper.

The gun pressed into her forehead roughly; Sara resisted the urge to break his arm. _Patience…_

"I said," the thug started, looming over her. "On your knees, bit-!"

Quick as a viper, Sara swerved her head to the side while her hands rose from her side to swat the gun away from her. A second later, Sara lunged for the man's arm, grabbing it, before bending it at the joint with unrelenting force. It snapped easily. The _cr-ack!_ of broken bone and torn ligaments was truly a haunting sound, but the scream that came from the drunkard was heavenly.

"ARGH! FUUUCK!" The man wailed, falling to his knees as he cradled his ruined arm.

His friends jumped at the sound, and nervously backed away. To them, it seemed as though one second ago their friend had had the advantage and a gun pressed to the blonde's head, and then in the next second their friend was on the ground, screaming bloody murder, with a broken arm.

"What the fuck?" One of them whispered to the other, beginning to look nervous.

Sara didn't pause in her assault, using everyone's confusion to her advantage. Before anyone could react, she kicked the kneeling thug right in the chest, knocking the air from his lungs. He crumpled to the ground, wheezing and panicking.

There was a single moment where their eyes met. Sara saw true fear in the drunk's eye. Sheer terror as the man came face to face with the Reaper itself.

The next moment, Sara's foot came crashing down, heel first, into the man's throat. There was a strangled gurgle as his throat was crushed; before he began to clutch at his ruined throat as he struggled to breathe. One hand attempted to claw its away towards the gun he had dropped, only to catch air as Sara kicked it away.

"Anyone else?" Sara asked coldly, staring them down with an intensity that made the men shiver.

They glanced at each other. Then at their friend on the ground. One looked scared. The other looked furious.

With a roar, the angry thug rushed towards her. Sara saw the knife coming; his intentions were so clear it was predictable. Sara dodged the fist, grabbing the man's outstretched arm.

Using his momentum that came from charging at her, Sara twisted it downwards, before using her foot to kick the underside of his knee. The man fell to his knees, his arm still in Sara's iron grip. The knife clattered to the ground. Sara grabbed it with her free hand.

Without a moment of hesitation, Sara wrapped her forearms around his throat. The man coughed and spluttered, desperately grabbing at her. Using the man's own knife, she quickly stabbed him in the jugular.

Sara stood up, facing the last drunkard. He had removed his knife from the woman's throat. He looked torn between the urge to avenge his friends, or to run away.

"Take away your guns and knives, and what are you?" Sara asked him angrily. "Without your tools of violence, what worth are you?"

All three of the men had been very intoxicated. They had the lack of judgment to decide to mug an innocent woman; they had the knives and gun to make themselves feel invincible. Against someone with such superior training, such as Sara, they never stood a chance.

"What the fuck are you?" The last mugger cried out.

She twirled the knife in her hands, fingers playing with its sharp edge. "I'm the justice you can't run from."

Sara leapt forward, the bloody knife in hand. The man tried to dodge, but his body was too slow. He howled in pain as Sara's knife sliced through his jacket and into the tender flesh of his arm.

He slashed at her face, but Sara was already out of the way. She had seen how his arm had tensed, making his next move predictable enough to let her jump away from him.

The man, angry at missing, lunged forward, hoping to stab her.

Sara sidestepped, barely missing the blade. With his arm now extended and his knife pointed away from her, the man's defense was gone. Sara pounced on the opportunity, and drove her knife into his subclavian artery.

The man fell to the ground, joining the rest of his dead friends. He would be joining them soon.

Panting from exertion and the thrill of combat, Sara turned her eyes towards the woman she had saved from a mugging. The woman backed away from her, scared.

"Don't be afraid," Sara said, in what she hoped was a soothing tone. "I won't hurt you."

The fear left the woman's eyes. She had realized that despite the blonde's overall deadly nature, she had only done so to save her. The fear turned into something else.

"You saved me," the woman said, staring at her with teary eyes of gratitude. "Why?"

Sara decided to be truthful. "No woman should suffer at the hands of men."

"You're a hero."

Sara's insides squirmed uncomfortably at the thankful words. She was many things, but not that. "I'm no hero." With that said, Sara turned on her heels and fled into the night, leaving behind three corpses and a thankful civilian.

She stumbled through the dark streets, not really paying attention to her surroundings. After walking three blocks, she chucked the bloody knife into the nearest garbage pile.

Her anger had vanished. It had been consumed in the ferocity of her actions, leaving her cold and comfortingly numb. She couldn't feel any self-loathing right now. Hell, she barely felt anything after she killed someone.

 _I wish Oliver was here,_ Sara thought sadly, already missing her boyfriend. Without him by her side, Sara felt… lonely. His absence was enough to make her heart ache.

Oliver could always make her feel better. He had always reminded her, time and time again, that even with her blood-stained hands and broken soul, she was still something worthy of attention and love. She wasn't too far gone; not like other killers they had encountered. Oliver still saw some small wisp of light, struggling to burn. He believed in her. He _loved her._

There was a moment where she considered sneaking her way into Queen Manor. She knew where it was, and even with their security detail Sara was confident that she could break into the lavish castle-like building.

No. She couldn't. If she did get caught, it would only cause problems down the road. Sara closed her eyes, breathing in the dirty air. No, she was being irrational. She couldn't risk their mission, not even for her own selfish desires.

 _Besides, I'll be seeing him soon._

 **()()()()()()()()**

By the time she got home, it was almost midnight. She had been gone for hours.

Sara could already feel her head begin to ache as she imagined her father's reaction to her sudden disappearance. He would be livid, especially because she didn't tell him anything. But what could she do, leave a note?

 _Hi daddy! I'm leaving the apartment for a little bit to head to the Glades. You know, the most dangerous part of the city? But don't worry, I'm actually a proficient killer who honed her skills in various shady organizations when I was away for five years._

Somehow she doubted that excuse would go over well with her father.

Laughing quietly, Sara quickly scaled the fire escape. In little under a minute, she was in her father's apartment, closing the window. If only she had had these stealth skills when she was a teenager; she would have never been caught by her paranoid, over-protective father.

The apartment was dark and quiet. Sara stepped through its cramped halls curiously, listening for any sign of her father. And yet, she heard nothing. Was he still out?

Not wanting to be caught out of bed if her father were to randomly appear, Sara walked back to her room. She closed the door quietly. She hoped that if she had nightmares again, her father wouldn't hear. He didn't deserve that.

 _You're a hero._

That was what that woman she had saved had called her. A hero.

She rested her head against the pillow, her body still thrumming with adrenaline. Her body had missed the rush of combat, the sheer thrill of danger.

"I'm not..." she whispered to herself, convinced. "I'm no hero…"


	6. Chapter 6

Detective Lance had seen a lot in his life, especially during his times patrolling the streets of Starling City. After so many years on the force having to deal with criminals that would rather just shoot first the second they saw a badge, he has seen just how violent a person could be. Later on as a detective, Quentin saw just how terrible a person could lower themselves to. By now, Quentin was rather desensitized to violence.

As a man whose job was to deal with the worst of society it took a lot to make Detective Quentin Lance freeze up.

So when Lucas had called him in the middle of dinner, saying that there had been an attack in the Glades, maybe the end result of gang warfare, Quentin had been prepared for a body. He hadn't been too nervous, not when he was used to such violence, and honestly the only thought going in his mind was that Laurel worked just down the street from where the crime had happened.

It took a great deal to shake him up.

 _This… This is one of those times._ Quentin thought to himself, feeling a bit sick in the stomach.

"Jesus Christ," Hilton breathed out in disgust.

The scene before them was reminiscent of a horror movie. One of the cheap ones that relied on body counts and fake blood to stir fear in someone's heart. This wasn't fake though. It was real. Disturbingly real.

The crime had taken place in an alley, back behind a struggling Italian restaurant with rather good breadsticks. Detective Lance knew that because he had come here with Laurel for a quick lunch break from time to time. Looking around at the scene, he doubted he would ever come back for a quick bite.

Bodies littered the alleyway, broken and bleeding. Some wore masks that looked like they had been bought from a costume shop. He spied one that looked like a devil mask that peered at him at an unnatural angle; the man's neck had been broken.

It was gruesome.

Quentin thought they reminded him of broken dolls by their splayed limbs, some twisted in grotesque ways. He also noticed how far apart they all were, as though someone had thrown them like ragdolls.

Lucas crouched down at the nearest body, a middle aged man with a rather protruding belly. Judging by the smell of kitchen grease and the white uniform, though it was yellowed by sweat and stained with blood, Quentin could tell that the man had been a simple cook, a victim that had been at the wrong place at the wrong time. The multitude of bullet holes that littered his cold corpse was proof of that.

"Poor guy…" he murmured. "Just some bad, rotten luck."

Quentin grunted in agreement. "Wrong place, wrong time. We need to contact his next of kin. Let them know." He felt sad for the man, who had been needlessly killed. Yet another innocent shot dead in the Glades _. Makes you wonder if we're even making a difference if you can't even step outside to take out the trash without getting a bullet in the gut. This could have been Laurel._

Shaking that last morbid thought from his mind, Quentin gained back his composure. "What do we know?" Quentin asked his partner.

Hilton shook his head and shrugged his shoulders. "Not much. We found tranquilizer guns on them, and one had an automatic. Military-grade. We're already trying to trace them, but it's doubtful we'll find anything useful. There weren't any numbers on the weapons. Practically untraceable. Whoever they were, these guys were professionals." He sounded befuddled, and Quentin could understand why.

If they were as professional as the weapons they touted, how had they met such a gruesome end?

Quentin couldn't help but point that out to his partner. "Professionals fight back, these guys looked as though they had been slaughtered."

"Hopefully we'll find out what killed them. Put an end to this before innocent people get hurt," Hilton said, ever the optimist of the two.

Quentin, who was the downer of the two, snorted. "Innocent people will always get hurt, Lucas. It's just a matter of slimming down the chances."

"Well aren't you just a ray of sunshine today…" Lucas grumbled under his breath, though he was well used to Lance's dour mood.

"I got pulled away while I was spending time with my daughter. You know, the one that I thought was dead for five years? Yeah, that one. Excuse me for not being happy for being pulled away from her to look at dead bodies."

"Remember what the captain said: less complaining, more investigating, Quentin."

"Yeah, yeah…"

The two pulled away from their banter to focus back on the crime scene. Lucas looked over at the bodies, while Quentin couldn't help but notice the state of the alleyway. He walked over to a bit of the brick wall across from the back of the restaurant, which seemed to be in shabbier state than the other parts.

Some of the bricks looked caved in as though they had taken a hit by something -sledgehammer? Bat? Car? - and cracks had sprouted out of the indented area, spreading outwards like a wayward spider web. He squatted down before the wall, and pressed a finger against the concrete flooring of the alley, rubbing the dusty rubble of broken brick between his index and thumb. A good amount of fresh debris. What could have done that?

Quentin really tried to ignore how the indented bricks formed a lumpy shape, vague and unclear, but recognizable if one looked at it long enough. Normally he would never ignore any type of evidence, but it just didn't fit. From what he had gathered the wall had probably been busted by something big and heavy-duty, like a sledgehammer or even a damn wrecking ball.

So why was the shape so… _humanoid?_

"Hey." He called over to one of the policemen near him. "Any of these guys got broken bones?"

One of the nearby police officers gave him a list of injuries the gunmen had. He instantly zeroed in on one of them, which happened to be the body closest to the wall.

The closest body nearly had every bone broken. Ribcage crushed, femur cracked, skull smashed. It was something akin to somebody getting run over by a semi.

Humanoid-shape cracked wall. Broken body. Blunt trauma.

There was no denying the resemblance that broken bit of wall formed a silhouette of a human being, but that just didn't make sense. Human bodies weren't compact enough to cause such damage unless something heavy and fast hit them. Granted the brick was old and had seen better days, and thus could be possibly be broken under certain situations, but it could't have happened here. If the person had been shot out of a cannon at point blank range, then Lance would understand. What the hell had the strength to fling a two hundred pound man into a brick wall, and then _break_ the wall?

"We have any tire tracks?" Quentin asked the one who had given him the list. "Any belonging to a big car? Like a truck or semi?"

The officer shrugged. "Aside from the van they used, there don't seem to be many tracks. This alleyway has been used a lot, and it's old. Everything sorta runs together. But…" he looked around at the alleyway, "I doubt a truck would fit in here enough to run someone into the sidewall. Just wouldn't fit."

"Yeah… Too narrow…" Quentin agreed, chewing on his bottom lip in thought.

 _If a car can't fit, then what caused a man to be thrown against a wall hard enough to practically shatter every bone in his body?_

Puzzling over this, Quentin decided to reconvene back with Lucas. Maybe bouncing some ideas off his partner would give him insight.

Hilton was talking with one of the forensics when he walked over.

"What'd you find?"

"Everything points to the perp using blunt weapons. Maybe a bat or sledgehammer." Lucas said, looking at the broken bodies with a wince. "All of these, sans the civilian, were killed by either strangulation or blunt trauma. No bullet wounds."

Quentin looked at him in disbelief. "Can't be. These guys had _guns_. Unless there were a lot of them, then the killer was using a handheld weapon to kill them. There are bullet holes everywhere and the ground has a good dozen empty shell casings at different areas, suggesting that there was gunfire. If they really were professionals, wouldn't they have hit at least one of the killers?"

"They could have moved the body after the fight. Maybe to protect their identities?"

Quentin shook his head. "No, that doesn't make sense. There's blood all around, but we can see them connected to the gunmens' locations. There's no random empty spot with blood, unless they had the time to clean it up, which is doubtful. They would have bolted them minute these guys dropped dead."

"So you think it was a small number of killers?"

Quentin nodded in confirmation. "Must be. Small enough to not risk identification, but large enough to take out these guys. Two or three, possibly. One man cannot do this much damage against armed forces. But still… how'd all these guys die by blunt trauma?"

Lucas sighed, "You'll probably want to see this. Maybe it'll help make up your mind. Whoever it was, they were strong." He walked over to one of the bodies, and pulled away the tarp. Lance got a good luck at the dead guy, though his face was still hidden by the mask. Lance bet that in the attack, the mask must have been a good scare tactic; but now it just looked a bit silly. The man's gun rested a few feet from the prone form confirmed that he had been one of the attackers, though Quentin wouldn't have minded calling them victims to a slaughter

Lucas gestured towards the man, "take a look under his shirt."

Frowning, Detective Lance did as suggested and pulled aside the man's loose jacket from his chest, before pulling up the man's simple white t-shirt. Immediately he winced and looked away. "Jesus…"

A large bruise had started to form in the center of the man's chest. Dark blue tinged with purple, the mere sight of it made the policeman flinch in sympathy. That had had to have hurt something fierce. Quentin didn't doubt for a minute that some of the man's ribs must have cracked from the impact. _What is it with these guys and broken bones?_

The bruise was lumpy, just a single mass of various colors of blue, purple, green and red. Quentin leaned closer for a better look, trying to understand how it connected to everything else. Despite it being more of a splotch than a shape, Quentin could see how the lower part was wider than the upper part, which was thinner than the bottom but also longer in height. It looked oddly familiar, even if entirely out of place.

Quentin placed his hand on the bruise, splaying his fingers as wide as possible to fit the bruise. His fingers hid the thinner, longer parts of the bruise, confirming both of their suspicions.

He had seen similar marks before, but never on the chest. He remembered seeing the results of domestic abuse and rape cases with women whose necks were bruised and battered with the same type of bruising. Fingers wrapped around a throat so tight they were half-strangling the victim.

 _Fingers_.

"You don't think…?" Hilton asked, having drawn the same conclusion right after Quentin. "I mean, it just doesn't make sense…"

"Nothing about this place makes sense, Lucas."

Curious, Quentin applied a small bit of pressure against the bruise. He had to fight back a grimace as he felt small bits of the ribcage move and grind against his touch. The sound was awful; he saw Lucas wince in the corner of his eye. "Ribcage is broken, more bits and pieces than a singular fracture." He told Hilton, before looking back at the bruise quizzically.

It was such an odd bruise, irregular in size that held no resemblance to anything that Quentin could logically piece together- save that the man had most likely died from the blunt impact trauma. However, there was no denying the resemblance of the shape.

It was a handprint.

A human handprint was emblazoned on the man's chest in the form of a severe bruise, a bruise that wouldn't have looked out of place on the victims of a car crash or any other situation that often created severe blunt force trauma.

A baseball bat caused bruises and broken ribs, just like a piece of pipe or rebar. Getting hit and run over by a car cause severe blunt trauma.

But a human hand?

A human, _period,_ was not capable of this.

So what happened here?

Everything about this place seemed off. All the evidence pointed to a simple conclusion: one, maybe two attackers, had fought against the gunmen. An innocent was shot. The gunmen killed. The perps left without a trace aside from the destruction. That was the easy stuff to put together, but the rest… the rest was just too confusing, too unrealistic.

It was like everything had been slightly tilted on its side, blurring the whole picture by just a margin. Suddenly reality had been flipped upside down, leaving the detective scratching his head at the facts that were right in his face, as though they weren't even there in the first place.

Never in all his years on the force had Quentin Lance ever seen something like this. He had seen the ends of turf wars, drug busts, domestic violence and even the handiwork of a serial killer, but never had he ever seen anything that neared the edge of reality as he knew it.

And, deep down, despite the randomness of the crime, Quentin knew that this wasn't the last he would see of whoever was capable of something like this. Somehow, he knew that whoever did this was just getting started.

And he knew that he was going to be right in the middle of it.

Quentin had only one thought about that.

 _Shit._


	7. Chapter 7

A package labeled with her name appeared on her father's doorstep a week after she had been released from the hospital; four days after her trip into the Glades.

It had been pure, dumb luck that her father had been out of the apartment when the package arrived. She never told him about it; instead she kept it hidden in her room.

It was just one more secret to have.

She knew who it was from. The jagged scrawl of written lettering on the cardboard that looked like chicken scratch was all she needed to see to know that it was from Oliver. She could even see the little rips on the surface from where the ballpoint pen had torn through it.

Writing was difficult for a man whose hands were capable of bending steel.

"What did you send me?" Sara wondered to herself as she began to open the box. A few seconds later, her self-asked question was answered.

It was a cellphone.

Curious, Sara turned it on. She waited patiently for the device to power up and activate. Once the phone had loaded, a quick swipe to unlock the phone revealed that it had already been enabled and some of her basic information had already been placed on it.

There were only a few seconds for her to read over the information before she received a quiet _beep_ that signaled a message notification.

The sender id flashed across the top of the screen; the message had been sent several days ago. The number that it had been sent by was unfamiliar to her, but it didn't really matter; Sara knew who it was from.

She tapped on the banner and looked at the message that contained only two words.

 _Adam Hunt._

"So, you're already going after someone on the List, aren't you, Oliver?" Sara muttered to herself as she googled the name with the phone. She recognized it from her countless readings of Oliver's hit list, but she didn't actually know anything about the man aside that he wasn't a good person.

A quick Google search soon gave her more information. Sara absorbed the information, making notes about how Hunt had been accused several times of various illegal activities, including stealing money from his customers through various loopholes in their contracts.

So many people had lost their life savings because of this man. Hunt benefited from their misfortune and lived a life of luxury while the people he stole from survived off scraps.

Adam Hunt was scum. It was no wonder that Robert Queen had written his name in the notebook. And now, Robert's son was going to ruin him. Or kill him. Whichever came first.

She was about to close out of the search browser when an article caught her eye. She clicked on it, rapidly reading the one page article.

There was a court case trying to be held by the District Attorney's office in hopes of finally pinning Hunt down with a series of embezzlement and fraud charges.

But that wasn't what caught Sara's attention.

What caught her attention was the name of the lawyer who was spearheading the case.

 _Dinah Laurel Lance_.

Her older sister was going after Hunt?

Sara felt a strong surge of pride race through her at the thought. Laurel had always claimed that she wanted to become a lawyer to help people, rather than protect the corrupt, rich fatcats that tried to control the justice system. And now, here she was, doing what she had promised to do.

 _Laurel is trying to help people, just like me._ She couldn't help but smile. _Laurel Lance, always trying to save the world._

Her respect for her sister had certainly just gone up a couple notches.

 _Is that why Oliver chose to go after Adam Hunt of all people? Because of Laurel?_

There was no denying that Hunt was dangerous, and her sister had surely shaken the hornet's nest by bringing up the case. From her research, this wasn't the first time lawyers had taken an interest in Hunt's criminal background; but the case had always been dropped. Some lawyers had even 'disappeared'.

If Hunt tried to do the same to her sister… Sara would destroy him before he even got close.

Her new phone buzzed again. This time, the message had just been sent.

 _I'm setting up._

She texted back a response.

 _Did you bring my munitions box?_

She really did miss her weapons.

A response.

 _Yes._

She smiled. She sent a quick reply as she got off her bed.

 _On my way._

Sara hurried out of the door.

* * *

Oliver was hunched over a workbench, carefully arranging various materials that he used to craft arrowheads. He was halfway through notching a specialized arrow that served as a smoke bomb, being extra careful to not set it off with misuse of his enhanced strength. To his left was a discarded arrow, a failed attempt at a new arrowhead technique.

Besides him, dozens upon dozens of normal arrowheads rested against another table, honed so wickedly sharp that they gleamed in the light.

He had picked up many things throughout the years.

The Island. Hong Kong. Russia. Japan.

They were but a few of the places he had traveled to during his five years away.

He had learned so much in his travels. Had learned stealth and espionage, had spoken new tongues, had met masters of their craft who shared their teachings with him, had gained inner peace within himself, and learned to be ruthless.

It was this knowledge that he would use on his crusade. With this knowledge, came his strength, and soon, Starling City would bleed before it began to heal.

His weapons were spread out on tables. Neat and immaculate. They were the tools of destruction and vengeance, and he was their wielder.

A soldier ready to go to war.

* * *

Hours later, Oliver had finished his crafting and instead began to focus on his archery. Grabbing his bow and a quiver full of his normal arrowheads, Oliver turned on a tennis ball throwing machine that he had bought the other day, and waited for his targets.

He had set the dial to the maximum speed, with random intervals to remove prediction.

 _Pafft._

A ball shot out.

His eyes recognized the neon yellow blur, his instincts reacted even before his mind could register the thought. He released the bow string, and let the arrow fly.

It struck the tennis ball, pinning it to the wall. It hung there, half deflated, the arrow still trembling from the force.

He breathed in, knocked another arrow. He waited.

 _Pafft. Pafft._

Two blurs, rather than one.

He aimed, released, hand traveled to quiver, knocked, aimed, released.

The whole process barely took five seconds.

 _Sloppy_. He thought, even though the two balls had joined their predecessor on the wall. _A week and a half out of practice, and you're already slow._ At his best, he could have done it in three seconds, despite the fact that hitting two small targets travelling at high speeds was in itself a true sign of his mastery.

Slade would have been laughing at him, had he been there. Slade always believed that Oliver, no matter how good his feat seemed, could improve. It was a trait that Oliver both loved and hated about his brother.

 _Pafft._

Aim, release.

Direct hit.

 _Pafft._

Aim, release.

Direct hit.

Oliver kept doing this, losing himself in the exercise, until the machine finally ran out of tennis balls. A quick glance at the wall revealed dozens of tennis balls with arrows embedded in them; he had missed none.

Suddenly, his ear twitched.

Oliver whirled around, just in time to see Sara Lance clambering down the rubble from across the hideout. He smiled, placed down his bow on a table, and headed over to her.

"Oliver!" Sara all but tackled him in her greeting, embracing him in a tight hug.

His heart feeling lighter for the first time in weeks, Oliver easily spun her around in a circle, ignoring her amused, half-hearted protests. When he finally did put her down, neither of them let go from their embrace.

"I missed you," Sara murmured in his ears, before pressing her forehead against his. For a moment, they just stared at one another with little smiles.

"I missed you too," he replied, leaning in for a kiss.

It was a soft kiss that wasn't fueled by passion or lust, but just as intimate. It was a kiss that came from their shared loneliness without the other. Oliver felt himself be lost as his senses were overwhelmed by Sara; kissing her again after weeks away was delightful.

He broke the kiss before it could go any deeper, because he knew that if he didn't than things would escalate from there and, while he would love nothing more than that, there was a reason he had called Sara here aside from wanting to see her.

"Welcome to the hideout," he said, spreading his arms out wide to gesture at the nearly completed lair. "Our home for all future operations, both solo and collaborative."

"It's very gloomy," Sara noted, sounding amused.

"I prefer to call it a dramatic atmosphere… anyway, I saved you some space," Oliver said, gesturing towards a half of the hideout that, while having a similar amount of work tables, was bare of any essentials. Sara's munitions chest was on one of the tables, and a few crates full of materials that Sara would use for crafting was also already there. Just one of the perks of having connections in shady American governments and the Russian bratva was gaining access to illegal materials.

Oliver sat down on a stool as his girlfriend headed to her munitions box. He heard the clicks of the combination lock opening, and watched her peruse the contents.

The first things that came out were Sara's beloved expandable kali sticks. He watched her go through a few basic moves, before she placed them on the table with the same care he did with his arrows.

Next, were Sara's unique choice of weaponry: her sonic devices.

"I hate those things." He commented, looking at the innocent little orbs with distaste. "They make my ears bleed."

"You have super hearing, Oliver. I've knocked you out with one of these before."

He winced at the memory. That particular event had ruptured his eardrums to the point that they had been shredded; it had taken a day for them to fully heal.

Sara pulled out a dozen or so throwing knives, laying them on their sides on a different table. "This will be my sharp objects table," she declared, running a finger down one of the knife's blade.

Oliver hummed. "You do love your sharp objects."

She shot him a grin before she went back to her task.

The next object was a military-grade handgun.

"Please tell me you have ammo in those crates?" Sara asked, inspecting the firearm for any sign of damage.

"Enough to arm an army," he assured her, pecking her on the cheek. She grinned at him as she pecked him on the lips in return. "Though I'd prefer if you waited on the gunfire."

"You're just mad because I'm a better shot than you with a firearm," Sara teased. Her smile widened when she saw Oliver's cheeks flush.

"I'm a better shot with the bow."

"That's because your main weapon is a bow, Oliver…"

"Still better at it than you."

Sara rolled her eyes. "Don't make your girlfriend angry when she is holding a dangerous firearm. That's basic advice from vigilante dating 101."

"Odd, I don't remember taking that class."

"Trust me, it is obviously apparent," she snipped back with a grin.

The two settled into a comfortable silence, with Oliver content to watch Sara inspect and organize her gear. Everything appeared to be functioning well, despite the boat trip.

"When are you going after Adam Hunt?" Sara asked as she looked up from counting her hollow-point bullets for the handgun.

"Soon. I'm going to see if scare tactics work; I want him to return the money he stole."

"And if he doesn't?"

Oliver simply smiled, "Then I'll make him do it."

Sara shared his smile; it would be a fun event to watch from the sidelines. "What about until you make a move on Hunt?"

He shrugged. "Probably just try and finish up this place, although most of the construction is already done. There really isn't too much to do."

"I'd beg to differ." Sara abandoned her weaponry and came close to the seated Oliver, a gleam in her eye.

His blood began to practically boil at that look in her eye. He knew that look very well. "Oh?" he asked nonchalantly.

"Mmmhmm," Sara hummed as she sat down in his lap, straddling him. "I can think of a few things to do."

Oliver's arms instinctively wrapped themselves around her waist, his hands already roaming. "I see."

Sara tucked her face in the crook of his neck, pecking him with soft kisses that sent jolts through his body, making his boiling blood practically _sing_.

"I can think of a few things too." He said with a throaty voice.

Sara just replied by kissing him.


	8. Chapter 8

Quentin Lance and his partner Lucas Hilton were currently in a high-end office building, listening and writing down a report of assault directed towards one of Starling's businessmen, Adam Hunt. It was supposed to be the same old standard procedure that both detectives had done a hundred times in the past; men with the wealth and reputation of Hunt being assaulted were not uncommon.

This retelling, however, differed from the others. If only for the sheer ludicrously on Hunt's account.

"He was wearing a hood. A green hood." Hunt explained. "And he had a bow and arrow."

Quentin and Lucas shared a _look_.

Hunt glowered at their disbelief.

"What you don't believe me? That maniac put two of my men in the hospital." A green arrow was all but shoved into Quentin's hands.

"Well, we'll need your statement." The detective provided, fiddling with the arrow. "And we'll put out a search notice for Robin Hood."

The businessman's face turned an ugly shade of red at the dry humor. "Do you find this situation funny, detective?"

Quentin just gave a little smirk in response.

"… Because I don't," Hunt continued. "And I don't take threats against my men and myself lightly."

"Yourself?" Hilton asked, catching the slip. "Were you injured?"

There had been no mentioning of Adam Hunt being injured in the report. Had he lied, or simply omitted that little detail?

Still glowering at the two detectives, Hunt reluctantly pulled down the collar of his shirt, revealing his bare throat. There, contrasting against the man's pale skin, were dark purple splotches. Very familiar splotches.

Lucas froze in the middle of writing something down in his book. The detectives stared at the bruising with various expressions of disbelief. They then looked at each at the same time, a silent conversation passing between the two. They reached an agreement almost immediately.

"What are those?" Quentin probed. "Fingers?"

Would Hunt give them an answer? Some clue as to who had been responsible to the dead men in the alleyway?

 _If this is related, then Hunt is very lucky his throat wasn't broken during the process,_ Lance thought grimly.

There was a barely noticeable wince as the businessman remembered last night's attack. "He grabbed me by the neck, yanked me out of the window." Hunt's fingers gently rubbed against the tender skin in memory. "He just… just lifted me as though I weighed nothing. He did it with one arm too…" The man looked terribly confused as he spoke, despite having witnessed the story with his very eyes.

"How is that possible, gentlemen?" Hunt asked them with utter seriousness.

Quentin's first reaction was to laugh. The man's story seemed completely ludicrous. He probably would have if he hadn't noticed Hunt's pale face and shaky hands.

 _Hunt believes it,_ he realized.

"Oh, so not only is he a wannabe Robin Hood, but he also seems to take muscle growth advice from Popeye. Great." Quentin commented, taking intense joy at the utter rage in Hunt's eyes.

"Sometimes when someone is under duress, people see and experience things that seem impossible." Hilton provided soothingly. "It's usually their mind trying to rationalize an irrational situation by creating falsehoods. It's a way of coping trauma."

Hunt glowered at the explanation.

 _He glowers a lot,_ Quentin couldn't help but think.

"I'm not coping. I'm telling the truth." Hunt was insistent.

Lucas and Quentin shared another disbelieving look. They still didn't believe him.

The redness returned to Hunt's cheeks at their disbelief. "That _maniac_ threw one of my men through the windshield. He punched through my car window with a single hit. Didn't use a brick or anything. Just punched it. He's some sort of freak," Hunt spat out the last word.

"Maybe the attacker was wearing brass knuckles, and you just didn't notice." Quentin replied tiredly. "Could easily have broken a window with a punch or two."

"Not this one. This guy wasn't human. He _couldn't_ be."

Ignoring the statement, Lucas looked up from his notebook. "What did he want from you? Surely someone like this had some sort of motive. Did he threaten you?"

Perhaps for the first time in this meeting, Hunt didn't have any sharp retort or subtle threat. Instead, the man remained surprisingly subdued.

"Ah, I see." Quentin drawled out in realization. "Let me guess: he knows something that you don't want other people, including the law enforcement, to know about. Makes me wonder of what you have to do to piss off a person like this?"

The man next to Hunt, Constantine something, lowered his hand by his hip at the not-so-subtle threat. Quentin could just barely see how the fabric of his jacket folded around what appeared to be a standardized pistol.

"If I were you…" Hunt leaned forward across his desk, voice dropping into a soft whisper that promised retribution. "I wouldn't suggest such a thing. Nothing ever good comes from unfounded accusations."

Quentin fought back a scoff at the threat. He was about to retort back, this time with threats of arrest, only to stop when Hilton placed his hand on his shoulder, pulling him back gently. "Don't." His partner whispered.

Hilton, bless the man's patience, tried to keep the conversation ongoing and civil. "You mentioned he threatened you. Can you tell me how?" He asked genially, appearing ever so cordial and concerned.

"Did he threaten to hit you with one of Cupid's arrows?" Lance asked smarmily, destroying his partner's progress without regret.

Hunt leveled a fierce glare at the detective.

"Quentin," Hilton hissed out in warning.

"Yeah, yeah…"

In all honesty, Quentin really didn't care about this man's situation. Even though he was a cop and had taken a vow to serve and save, Quentin wouldn't mind if Adam Hunt dropped dead. The man was a liar and a crook. Not to mention their very first conversation at the beginning of the meeting had concerned his daughter, Laurel.

Hunt had mentioned that Laurel was going after him in a lawsuit.

Then he had threatened her.

 _Nobody_ threatens Quentin Lance's daughters.

Perhaps sensing just how terribly this conversation could go, Hilton quickly took charge again. He gave the man his most charming smile, all the while shouldering the grimacing Lance to the side in a not-so subtle attempt to divert attention. "So what do you need us for, Mr. Hunt?"

"… He said he was going to kill me."

Perhaps it was the detective skills, but Lance couldn't help but notice the tremble in the millionaire's tone. That, and how Hunt kept touching his bruised neck, broke the man's supposed composure and revealed a simple, ugly truth.

Adam Hunt was scared.

There was one more moment where the businessman seemed to collect himself. His hands stopped trembling, and his pale face now sported a determined look. "I need protection. He said he would be back for me. Ten o'clock tomorrow night. A police escort working alongside my security team should be more than enough to stop this freak."

The next couple of minutes were spent discussing how to best prevent Hunt's demise. They went over shifts and patrols, calculated response times, and so on. All parties were confident they would catch the attacker. One man with a bow didn't stand a chance against a trained police unit along with security guards. It didn't take long to finish. By the end, Hunt seemed to have calmed down again.

"Do your jobs, officers. Get the freakshow quick, and maybe I'll even consider sending you a gratuitous fruit basket."

Lance's sneer grew. "That sounds _lovely_."

Hunt straightened up, and placed his hands behind his back. "Good day then, gentlemen."

The two detectives remained quiet as Hunt's new head of security escorted them to the private elevator. It was only when the doors shut closed and soothing music began to play in the stereos did the two look at one another.

"So, what do you think?" Quentin asked his friend as he leaned against the metal wall.

Hilton shrugged. "Elongated bruising on the neck just like the victims in that alleyway in the Glades. The only thing is that all those guys have broken necks; Hunt just has a tender neck."

"Still takes a lot of pressure to make such bruises though," Quentin noted.

"Yeah…"

Both reflected on their meeting with Hunt. They ran through a dozen theories, connecting and removing points of interest within their minds.

Quentin sighed. "Hunt said his attack was unnaturally strong. Somehow able to throw a grown man through a windshield, broke a car window with one punch, lifting Hunt out of the car with one hand. If he's telling the truth and isn't bullshitting us…"

"But that's not physically possible." Lucas argued.

"I know, I know."

 _Still, that ambush in the alleyway didn't seem possible either…_ the little voice in the back of Quentin's head couldn't help but comment. _Those guys were like dolls that were torn apart. You saw Hunt's bruising; you know the amount of pressure needed to bruise that much._

"We'll provide protection for Mr. Hunt," Quentin declared tiredly. "He's an asshole, but we're obligated to help out. If this Hood guy tries to show up again looking for a fight, he'll find one."


	9. Chapter 9

"I have to admit," Oliver commented over the roar of the music and crowd, "You still know how to throw a party, Tommy."

The Merlyn heir grinned at him from behind a cocktail glass. "And it seems you still know your toasts." He complimented. "Tequila truly is a gift."

Oliver laughed at that, and Tommy felt himself preen at the attention. God, how he had _missed_ Oliver by his side these past five years. Without him… Tommy had been alone.

Feeling oddly sentimental, Tommy allowed himself to bask in the scene of the club, the feel of a glass against his palm, the adoring crowds, and, of course, his best friend standing right beside him. It was the glorious golden days coming back after a long absence.

This was, without a doubt, the best night Tommy had had in years, and he was going to enjoy every second of it.

"I know you're a bit rusty at this, but I'm here for you. Even if you have those old man earplugs-"

"-I'm not used to loud noises, Tommy. There weren't any club scenes on a deserted island," Oliver noted dryly. "I could easily burst an eardrum. Doctor's orders," he tapped one of his ears.

A doctor actually had recommended reinforced earplugs if he ever entered a place with loud noises, such as a club, so his enhanced hearing wouldn't burst his eardrums. The simple fact that the doctor had been an A.R.G.U.S. agent instead of a doctor at a normal hospital was simply ignored.

"Still, I'm going to be by your side to help you adjust. There are so many people you still have to meet. I know I've already told you about Carmen Golden, but there are still some very lovely ladies that I think you would appreciate to be on a first name basis."

Chuckling, Oliver just shook his head in amusement. "Whatever you say, Tommy, I'll-" he broke off mid-sentence, his whole body tensing up as he stopped in his tracks, staring at something over Tommy's shoulder. Suddenly, he smiled.

Tommy, a bit taken aback by Oliver's smile, turned around. He came face to face with a familiar woman that he hadn't seen in over five years. Something in his gut clenched painfully as he recognized Sara Lance.

"Tommy," Sara greeted him with a nod.

"S-Sara." There was a slight tumble of words from the Merlyn heir as he tried to compose himself. "It's been a while."

The blonde gave a small, wry smile at that. "It has. It's good to see you again." She turned her attention to Oliver, and the smile grew larger. "Hey."

The smile she received from Tommy's best friend was dazzling in its genuine nature. Tommy suddenly came to the realization that that was the first real smile he had seen Ollie give tonight.

"Hey yourself. You look nice."

Sara snorted at that as she gestured at her outfit with a lazy wave of the hand. She was dressed casually despite it being a club event. She was wearing a pair of worn jeans and a dark jacket to keep out the chill; in comparison to all the buxom beauties wearing bright, tight dresses, Sara stuck out like a sore thumb.

"I think you look beautiful." Oliver asserted.

Ollie had said that to the brave girls that had come up to them for a drink and a chat.

Her smile rose, almost playfully. "Are you sure you want to say that where all your friends can hear? What would all the ladies think?" Apparently she had caught on too.

 _They mean nothing._ Oliver's eyes seemed to say.

Tommy felt uncomfortable looking at his friend, who seemed to have forgotten everything in that moment aside from the woman in front of him.

 _You're everything._

Tommy felt like he was imposing on something that he had no reason to witness. Unable to think of what to do, Tommy drained the last of his drink and excused himself in order to get a new one. Oliver just nodded, seemingly unconcerned by the departure.

Scowling angrily at being brushed off, and maybe even in jealously, Tommy stalked over to the bar. He needed another drink.

* * *

Thea was here.

"I'll be right back…" Oliver murmured to Sara, who nodded in understanding once she saw Thea, before heading over towards his sister. His _seventeen_ year old little sister who was at his 'welcome back from the dead' bash, courtesy of one Tommy Merlyn. People moved out of his way and raised their glasses to him, toasting his survival and his great taste in cocktails. Oliver didn't pay them any attention. Had they not moved out of the way, he would have surely bulldozed through their numbers.

Through the mass of people, Oliver saw Thea smile at some man with a ponytail, her hand closed around a little plastic packet. Jaw clenched tightly, it took all of his willpower to not deck the man in the face. _That guy should be thanking his lucky stars for Shado's restraint training, or he would be a bloodstain on the floor right now…_

Despite his murderous thoughts, Oliver managed to reign in his anger enough that his murderous scowl simply turned into an annoyed frown now that he was focused on his younger sister.

"Ollie, hey, sick party!" Thea said, smiling widely, even as he all but pulled her by the elbow away from her group of friends.

"Who let you in here?"

Thea's smile dimmed at her brother's chilly greeting. "I believe it was the man who said 'right this way, Miss Queen." Her eyes narrowed slightly, while her chin raised ever so slightly in such an iconic teenage rebellion.

Oliver made a mental note to fire the doorman. Then he would find Mr. Ponytail, resident drug dealer, and beat him to a bloody pulp. Surely a vigilante could attack a random target every now and then, right?

It wouldn't be the first man Oliver had killed to protect his sister.

And it probably wouldn't be the last.

"You shouldn't be here." Thea's smile twisted into a frown and looked ready to say something, so he continued before she could interrupt him. "You're seventeen. You can't be here."

"Ollie, I'm not twelve anymore." Thea countered her brother, beginning to look less annoyed and more angry. "You can't tell me what I can and can't do."

"You're _seventeen._ "

Thea was definitely angry now. She straightened herself up, squaring her shoulders, jutting out her chin even further in defiance. But now, Oliver saw past the implication of it being simple teenage rebellion and saw that, deep down in its core, this was an old resentment buried down deep, only now bubbling back to the surface.

"No. No," Thea's tone turned sharp and bitter as she jabbed him in the chest with an accusating index finger. "You do _not_ get to come back and dictate my life."

Oliver was unfazed by the venom in his little sister's tone. If anything, he managed to match the same venom with his next sentence. "I'm not going to sit back and watch you make the same mistakes I did. I won't let you ruin yourself, Thea."

"You're my brother, Ollie, but you can't come back here and judge me. Especially for being just like you."

Though Oliver would never admit it, Thea's words struck deep. When he spoke, it felt as though something was lodged in his throat."…I know it couldn't have been easy when I was away." He began slowly, playing for time, only for Thea to laugh bitterly in his face.

"Away? Ollie, you were dead. My father and brother died. I went to your funerals. Mom had Walter, and I-I," Thea's eyes grew misty. "… I had no one…"

"Thea…"

"So you can just stop pretending that the last five years never happened, okay? Because they did. You died. I was left alone. And I made with what I had."

"So this was your answer?" He held up the little drug packet right up to her face.

Thea's eyes widened as she recognized it as the drugs she had just bought. "H-How did you-" she looked down at her empty hands with disbelief. The realization that her brother had somehow managed to snag them from her very fingers seemed to stun her into silence.

Oliver pocketed the drugs away in his coat. Thea's eyes followed the movement, paused, and then looked him straight in the eye with resentment.

"You're an ass, Ollie." She spat out before stomping away towards her friend group.

There wasn't anything Oliver could do beside watch her go.

"Are you going to be okay?" Came the familiar voice of Sara as she stood by his side, drink in hand.

Oliver wished he could lie and say yes, but Sara was too smart to fall for that. She knew him too well. "No. I don't think so." Oliver admitted. "At the moment… I feel rather useless."

Wordlessly, Sara offered up her drink to him. He felt himself smile, despite himself, at the offer, because both of them knew that it was practically impossible for Oliver to get drunk.

"Just give her time. It's been hard for her too," Sara said. "She'll come around."

"Yeah, I guess…" Oliver replied, sounding unconvinced.

Sara took a sip of her drink.

"Laurel is here." She said suddenly.

Was she? Oliver hadn't invited her. To be honest, he hadn't even thought about Laurel coming to this 'welcome back' party at all. From how their meeting at the CNRI had gone, he had been certain that Laurel would rather jump off a bridge than ever go to a party that celebrated his survival. "Tommy must have invited her." He reasoned.

"Mm."

Suddenly, the phone is his pocket began to vibrate. He pulled it out, noting the time. It was already ten. Had Hunt followed his order? Or would Oliver have to make full on his promised threat?

The screen flashed numerous digits at him, all the same number. A big, whopping _0._

Hunt hadn't done it.

"It's time," he told Sara, keeping his voice down. "I'll be right back." Unfortunately for Hunt, his disastrous talk with Thea had left him in a dark mood. He was practically itching to punch something, and now Hunt had presented the opportunity. "This shouldn't take too long."

She just smiled at him. "Go get 'em."

Lips curled upwards into a genuine smile, Oliver simply nodded his head. He bent down to press his lips against her forehead with a tender kiss, and began to make his way through the crowd towards the stairwell.

Oliver Queen had played his role tonight. Now, it was time for the Hood to play his part as well.

* * *

Soft, relaxing elevator music played on his way up towards Hunt's office.

The armored vigilante hummed along as he carefully watched the buttons flash through the dozens of floor levels. In one hand, he held his weapon. In the other, a simple switch that was more of an EMP, capable of disrupting the power on Hunt's floor. No matter what awaited him, Oliver was confident that the darkness would be his friend tonight.

The elevator slowly stopped, the number _20_ flashing once on the panel, before the doors opened with a peaceful _chime._

Oliver sprang into action immediately by pressing the switch. Around him, all the lights flickered wildly before dying out. Wasting no time, he lunged forward, already knocking an arrow. He aimed at the closest guard, hitting him in the chest. Without missing a beat, Oliver nocked another arrow, before hitting another guard right in his upper thigh. The man screamed, before he was knocked unconscious by Oliver's boot to the face.

 _Click._

The noise would have been almost unnoticeable to the average hearing range, but Oliver, with his _Mirakuru-_ enhanced body, heard it as though it were an explosion. Instinct took over, and he lunged for the nearest pillar, barely missing the hail of bullets that ripped through the wall.

Hiding, Oliver could hear and feel each bullet slamming into the pillar that sheltered him. Luckily, the pillar was made of stone. He waited for several seconds, not moving.

 _Click_. _Click._

An empty clip.

Crouching down, Oliver grabbed a flechette from his belt. He rolled into the open and threw the flechette at the man's gun. It struck true and was knocked from the surprised man's hands

Rushing forward, Oliver brought his bow down like a staff against the man's forearm. There was the sickening crunch of breaking bone and Oliver heard the man scream. The gun clattered to the ground, useless without a holder, and Oliver proceeded to punch the man several times in the gut, before flinging him to the ground where the man remained, cradling his shattered arm.

Slowly standing, the archer paused for breath. Oliver could feel every nerve in his body burning from the adrenaline. Every muscle throbbed soothingly, as though there had been an internal itch that Oliver had finally scratched.

Suddenly another bodyguard appeared with a pistol in hand. _How many men has Hunt hired?_ Oliver thought tiredly.

"Oh, for God's sake." Oliver muttered. He was done with Hunt's seemingly endless horde minion bodyguards. He walked forward, not even pausing when a man aimed his pistol at him. The man smirked in victory as he pressed the trigger multiple times.

Oliver's only thought in regards to being shot multiple times in the torso at close range in the space of three seconds was simply: _ow, ow, OW!_ _Alright, that last one stung a bit._

The goon's victorious smirk was wiped away as he saw the man that he had shot multiple times was still standing. Then, his face contorted into a mixture of bewilderment and fear as the vigilante, who _should be dead_ , took a step forward. And then another step. And another.

Without missing a beat, Oliver grabbed the stupefied man and threw him into the wall as though he weighed nothing; there was a sickening crack when the man hit his head against the stone. As he heard the man die, Oliver let himself be thrown back into the numbing sensation that came from such brutal killing.

An observant mind was a dangerous thing in combat. It took note of everything, including how the man who he had just grappled and pummeled without a second thought was a _man,_ a living being just like Oliver himself. An observant mind led to hesitation and doubt, things that would render him useless.

Sometimes it was just better to let himself be carried along, to just lose himself in the dance of combat.

Grabbing one of the guards by the front of his jacket, Oliver easily threw the larger man through a glass doorway. The men inside fired blindly at the noise, unknowingly killing their comrade. Oliver rushed forwards, avoiding the butt of a gun that had been aiming for his head, and swiped at the attacker with his bow. He aimed for the back of the knees, stumbling the man enough to lose balance. A quick blow to the side of his head left the gunman sprawled on the floor.

The other bodyguard was swiftly killed by a thrown flechette to the throat. Oliver looked up, breathing a bit heavily from exertion, and realized that he had finally made it into Hunt's actual office. And there he was, Adam Hunt, scared and trembling as he cowered behind his desk.

There were only two more. Hunt and a man with a knife. Shifting on his feet, Oliver remembered that he only had two more arrows left. The one he was going to use to hack Hunt's systems and leave the man without his dirty fortune, and one that he would only use in an emergency.

The last bodyguard stood in front of Hunt protectively, before slowly walking forward. Oliver lowered his bow, and shifted his weight into a defensive stance. For a moment, the two stared at one another, evaluating the other.

Then the bodyguard lunged forward.

Oliver side-stepped, backing away on the defensive. He dodged several punches, side-stepped a kick aimed towards his gut. Oliver threw in a few punches of his own, but, surprisingly, the man seemed to have some history of martial training and was able to dodge.

"He's here! He's HERE!" Hunt was screaming into a phone while they fought. Oliver cursed under his breath as he dodged a punch aimed for the solar plexus.

The man he was fighting was quick and well-trained in close-combat, unlike the others who seemed to only know how to aim and shoot a gun. Oliver was actually impressed that Hunt had managed to fine someone with such skill in a short amount of time. However, this man was nothing in comparison to Slade Wilson or Tatsu Yamashiro in regards to close combat.

The man's blows were well struck and brutal. They would have brought a normal man to his knees, but Oliver was no normal man.

There was the sudden sound of knife being pulled from a holster. Oliver leapt back, rocking on his heels, to avoid the sudden slash that could have gutted him. The bodyguard recovered quickly from the miss, and swiped again and again viscously. Oliver batted away one of the swipes with his bow, only to be kicked in the stomach. Grunting, Oliver backed away to gain space.

The knife-wielder took that as a sign of retreat, a weakness to be exploited, and lunged.

But Oliver was ready this time. He sidestepped, the knife missing his body by only a few inches, and grabbed the man's forearm, before stepping around to roughly twist the arm against the man's back until he was forced to drop it. As the man doubled over in pain, clutching his throbbing arm, Oliver picked up the knife from the floor. Giving it a quick twirl, there was no hesitation as Oliver stabbed the man in the chest with his own weapon. The man gurgled on last, choky breath before dying.

There was movement in the corner of his vision. Oliver shot his second to last arrow, barely missing Hunt's head by an inch or two, which stuck itself onto the wall where the computer systems were hidden in.

"You missed," Hunt noted weakly, not noticing that the arrow had begun to softly light up as it started to hack into the man's computer system. Within a minute, Adam Hunt's bank accounts will dry up as his fortune was returned to the rightful owners, along with a bit of a bonus.

 _Do I kill him to set an example?_ Oliver wondered as he stared at the business man who no longer had any of the sharp, cocky bluster from before. Now, he was just a scared man with no one to save him.

Perhaps killing him was unnecessary.

Hunt was now ousted, bankrupt and broken.

There was no need to kill him. Oliver had gotten what he wanted, and perhaps his father's spirit could rest a little bit easier now. Finally, after so many years, he was finally making amends and righting his family's wrongs. A strange sense of calm came upon him, taking away a little piece of the heavy burden on his shoulders.

He stood over the cowering Hunt, staring down at him with dark eyes. "You have failed this city."

Hunt trembled.

There was the sudden impending sound of boots stomping on carpet and broken glass.

"Freeze! SPCD!" Someone screamed out. "Get down! Get down!"

Oliver spun around, last arrow already knocked. Ready to release the string, Oliver didn't have to so much as aim as he did- was that _Quentin Lance?_

Oliver panicked, and only just barely managed to shift his aim enough that the arrow shot past Lance's head, nicking his ear.

"Fuck!" Quentin swore, his ear bleeding profusely. His hand instinctively rising to touch the stinging cut.

In the end, it was Oliver's super-enhanced reflexes that prevented Sara's father from meeting an early death by his own hand. Reacting quickly, though barely quick enough, Oliver only managed to shift his aim enough that the arrow shot past Lance's head, nicking his ear.

Had he been too slow, the arrow would have gone through the man's eye, and Sara would have lost her father.

The man besides Quentin, Lucas, raised his pistol, but before the detective could so much as shout out a command of surrender, Oliver took a step back, turned on his heels, and leapt out of the office window.

He fell for a few seconds, before landing on the zip line he had set up earlier. He rapidly began to descend, leaving behind a pair of befuddled detectives.

"A zip line?" Quentin asked faintly, back in the office. "Did he just jump out of a twenty story window onto a fucking _zip line!?"_

The two detectives incredulously watched as the daredevil vigilante finished his descent onto the roof of another building. Even from such a distance, the detectives could hear the faint thrum of club music and the flashing lights were blinding against the night sky.

"What's going on down there? Some kind of party?"

"Tommy Merlyn is throwing some sort of throwback bash for the Queen kid coming back from the dead." Lucas explained, though he had the common sense to not mention Sara.

Quentin honestly wanted nothing more to do with the Queen family, especially Oliver Queen… but the hooded figure had obviously used that building to prepare if he had had connected a zipline from a high rise to the roof of an adjacent, shorter building. Even if it was just some odd coincidence, it still warranted at least a quick look around.

"Come on, let's go…"

 **()()()()()**

After quickly changing into his civilian clothes, Oliver made it his mission to find Sara. Ignoring the partygoers around him, it only took him a minute or two to find his girlfriend. It helped that her casual garb made her stick out against the crowd.

"Hey," he greeted her, running a hand through his wind-swept hair in an attempt to tame it.

She smiled up at him in greeting. Tilting her head to the side, she scrutinized him. Before he could ask what was wrong, Sara licked her thumb and raised it to his face. "You got a little paint smear there." She dabbed at the corner of his eye. Sure enough, when she pulled back, there was a tiny bit of leftover green paint on her finger. "You're good now."

"Thanks."

"Shit!" Sara's curse was barely audible above the music. Oliver looked at her, only to catch the expression on her face, before following her gaze to see Detective Quentin Lance and Detective Lucas Hilton trying to make their way through the crowd.

"You should go."

If Sara's father found out she had been here… Oliver did _not_ want to deal with the repercussions of that.

Sara gave his hand a tight squeeze; a small comfort for the hardship that this encounter would surely bring them. Then she was gone in the sea of dancers, who, even now, were slowly stopping their dances to watch the two policemen come through the crowd.

 _It seems like Sara is done here. Lucky her, but now I have to deal with her dear old man._

"Best get on with it…" Oliver mumbled to himself as he slowly made his way over to the policemen, already dreading the encounter with Sara's disapproving father who hated him to hell and back.

"Mr. Queen." Quentin's voice was clipped.

"Detective Lance," Oliver greeted Sara's father courteously, not even batting an eye at the dirty look Quentin was giving him. "This is a private event. I'm sorry, but you'll have to leave."

Quentin scoffed and held up his badge. "Sorry, boy, but we're in our jurisdiction. There was an assault in the next building over, multiple casualties. The assailant was last seen on the rooftop of this very building. The party is over for you. All of you." He looked over at the crowd of people who immediately booed at his words.

Oliver kept his smile up. His eyes flickered from Quentin's to a spot above the older man's shoulder, where he could just barely see Sara's form slowly blend into the crowd, and subtly edging towards an exit. He would continue to distract the policemen, at least until Sara was gone.

"This building you say?" Oliver drank from his glass, skillfully appearing uncaring and oblivious to the dire situation of a masked murderer on the loose. "Why'd you come in here instead of, you know, the roof? Wasn't that where you last saw him?" He asked innocently. Quentin's face turned dark red at the jab; Hilton looked at his partner worriedly, before turning his attention back to the Queen heir.

"He wouldn't have been able to blend in among the guests. He wore a distinctive, dark leather suit-" Oliver interrupted Hilton with an incredulous cough at that, "-I know, he's a weird one. He had a bow and arrow. We were hoping that someone might have seen something."

"With the amount we're drinking, I'm sure someone has seen even weirder. Right guys?" The crowd roared in response, holding up their cocktails.

Quentin just gave him a dirty look.

Changing his politely inquisitive facial expression to one of slight surprise, Oliver grabbed the handkerchief from his pocket, and offered it to the detective. "You're bleeding." He noted, as though he hadn't noticed the bleeding ear before now.

Let it not be said that Moira Queen hadn't tried to instill manners within her son.

From the look on Lance's face, Oliver may as well have tried to hand him a venomous snake. He didn't take the offered gift, and instead crossed his arms.

Oliver let his hand fall down awkwardly to his side.

"We're still going to have to shut this whole thing down," Lucas said, his tone friendlier. "These people could be in danger of this man."

At that reasoning, Oliver didn't argue. Mostly because he himself wanted to leave, but couldn't because the image of Oliver Queen leaving his own party early was odd enough to be considered suspicious. "I can't argue with that, detective Hilton. I'd rather have everyone here be safe."

Lucas smiled at the assistance. "Thank you, Mr. Queen."

"I guess we're done here." Quentin grumbled. He began to walk away, but not before he said one last thing, loud enough for everyone nearby to hear. "Stay away from my daughters, Queen."

Oliver's smile dropped. "Noted."

Like hell he would.

"Have a nice night, gentlemen…"

* * *

In a high rise nestled within the very heart of the Starling City business district, Moira Queen and Malcolm Merlyn met behind closed doors to discuss what had happened over the last couple of weeks: Oliver's apparent survival and his return home.

Malcom, the mastermind of all these deadly schemes, wasn't as joyful as his son, Tommy, in regards to Oliver's survival. He was concerned that Robert, in his dying moments, had told Oliver about the Undertaking, or, at the very least, any sort of hint.

If he weren't Moira's son and Tommy's brother in all but blood, Malcolm would have already killed Oliver. But, he had been patient, cautious, and wary.

"You're sure he knows nothing?" He asked Moira sharply. He didn't truly trust her, not when it came to family. But, he would listen to her, and judge.

It seemed that Moira had been busy this last week.

"I sent men after him. Armed men. They took him captive, and drilled him for information." Moira said simply, as though kidnapping her son and interrogating him meant nothing to her. "They were very persuasive. Oliver told them everything, and he was sincere. Robert drowned that night, he never made it on the lifeboat. He never said any final words that could damn you or your plans for this city. My son knows nothing."

Malcom remained quiet, seemingly lost in contemplation.

"You have nothing to fear from my son, Malcom. I assure you of that." Moira told him with the utmost sincerity.

The man nodded his head, seemingly accepting her word for it. His attention drifted to the cityscape spread out before them.

Moira turned away from him, unable to look the man in the face. She knew that if she continued to stare at him, her resolve would crumble and Malcolm would see the truth in her eyes. He would know that she was lying through her teeth, and then he would kill Oliver.

Because the men she had sent to scare her son into revealing what had happened the night the _Queen's Gambit_ sank had never told her that Oliver knew nothing. In fact, they had never come back at all.

It was only thanks to a mole in the SCPD that she heard about the multiple dead bodies in the morgue, broken and beaten. She had heard that the injuries had been gruesome and painful; it was so bad that the department was trying to hush it all up to prevent any panic among the populace.

Moira wondered.

She had sent those men.

All those men had died.

The implication lingered in the back of her mind, but she couldn't herself to look too deeply into it for fear of discovering something she didn't want to know. Moira would much rather remain ignorant of what had happened to those men, or rather, what her son had done to them.

Or had the men she had sent been killed by another faction unknown to her? Had Oliver even been involved? There was no way to be certain.

Had her son become a killer in those five years away?

The thought tore at her. Her son who, despite his age, was still very much her little boy.

Would she be able to protect her son from the likes of Malcolm Merlyn? The man who had sabotaged the yacht and killed her husband was not someone to underestimate. Not when the life on the line was the life of a son she had only just had returned from the dead. She would have to keep him safe.

Moira couldn't lose Oliver. Not again. She was certain that if her son was lost to her once again, it would kill her.

Moira would have to keep an eye on her son, track everything he did to make sure he didn't put himself in Malcolm's crosshairs.

 _What happened to you, Oliver?_


	10. Chapter 10

Oliver idly ate a bowl of cereal in the kitchen, switching his focus back and forth from his breakfast to the news broadcast from the television placed on the countertop. Around him, Queen manor was bustling with morning activity of which he took no part in; he just ate his cereal and watched the news.

" _-SCPD still refuses to release more information about the identity and motives of the killer-"_

"Mom, have you seen my jacket?" Thea called out, coming into the kitchen and moving about to grab breakfast like a whirlwind.

" _-Hunt has been placed under arrest following the attack, when a sudden influx of newfound information was provided to various news outlets that held undeniable proof of criminal activities-"_

"Thea, you'll be late for school," Moira scolded her daughter as she entered the kitchen with Thea's missing school jacket. "You left it hanging on the banister. I've _told you_ to put away your clothes-"

" _\- the businessman has been charged with several crimes, including extortion, money laundering and embezzlement."_

"Yeah, yeah." Thea grumbled as she took the jacket and put it on.

" _-District Attorney Laurel Lance will be spearheading Hunt's persecution-"_

Thea sat down on the stool besides him, but somehow managed to adjust her body so that her back was facing Oliver. Thea was still upset about that night at the club and had resorted to avoiding her brother as much as possible. Oliver didn't comment on the cold shoulder act, and instead continued to eat his breakfast. He hadn't gotten to eat much the past few days with all the work that had to be done to the hideout.

Moira's attention drifted to the television. Her eyes narrowed as she clucked in distaste. "Hopefully Laurel will put Hunt away for good. I never did like that man, always so pompous of himself. I just feel terrible for his daughter, such a lovely girl…"

"Anything about the hood guy?" Thea asked around a mouthful of oatmeal.

"Manners, Thea." Moira chastised. Thea just rolled her eyes in exasperation, but didn't argue.

Their mother was watching the news broadcast intently. There was a tightness around her eyes that pronounced the fine wrinkles by her temple, Moira Queen looked exhausted and worried.

"They'll catch him, mom." He said to comfort her, all the while wondering how he had missed how stressed his mother had been. He had thought himself more insightful, but apparently that wasn't the case.

His mother just gave him a tight smile. There was a nervousness about her, filling the room with an odd tension. His fingers began to curl, pulling themselves inwards towards his chest. It was a nervous tick he had never managed to outgrow.

Thea didn't seem to notice the mood. "I'm going to Margo's after school today," She informed their mother in between bites, still mindful of her chastisement.

Moira's brow furrowed and her lips pursed together tightly. Oliver recognized that face with a dread that curled his insides as he remembered it from his own teenage years. It was the _Mom-look._ Emphasis on the capital 'M'. "No, you're not going to anyone's house today, or any day."

"Good one mom," Thea snorted. When their mother didn't respond, she looked up from her oatmeal with wide eyes. "Wait you're serious?"

"I want you home where its safe." Moira fixed Thea with a stern look that made the protest die down, although Thea still glared with enough ferocity to set the countertop alight. "I don't like the idea of you two walking about while there's a deranged killer on the loose."

"Isn't there another nutjob killing people in the Glades?" Thea countered. "Besides, since when do we care about murderers? We're not under any threat. Besides, there's security at Margo's place to protect us against arrows." She said the last part half seriously, half sarcastically.

"I think mom is right, Thea." Oliver said in surprise support of his mother. "These are dangerous times. There are very dangerous people roaming the streets. Perhaps it's better to be safe than sorry."

"Thank you, Oliver." His mother said, relieved. "I'm glad you see the sense in this."

Oliver winked at Thea, who scowled darkly at his betrayal.

"-which is why you'll also have a private guard to escort you around as well-"

"What!?"

His mother shot him a stern look at the interruption. "Manners, Oliver. You will be escorted as well. I want you safe, Oliver." Besides him, Thea snickered into her oatmeal. Oliver resisted the childish urge to push her off the stool.

"I don't need a babysitter." He stated, standing up from his seat. He towered over his mother in height, and must have surely weighed twice her weight in compact muscle, but Moira Queen had a dominating presence that made him feel like a little boy all over again. But still, he would not back down from this. Not when so much depended on his ability to disappear. A bodyguard was the worst possible thing that could have happened at this point!

"It's for your own good," Thea parroted his words back at him with a grin.

Their mother pounced on Thea's words and used them to her full advantage. "Exactly, Thea. This isn't a punishment, Oliver. This is for your protection. I want you both to be safe. Please, if not for your sakes, then for mine."

 _A bodyguard is an inconvenience I can't afford!_ Oliver thought to himself. This conversation had turned out to be a trap, and now he was cornered. He was beginning to panic. _Also, for all I know they might report everything they see and hear back to my mother…_

This bodyguard was beginning to sound much more like a private spy in his mother's employ.

"Mom," he began, trying to hide the desperation in his voice. "I don't need a bodyguard."

Already he was thinking of escape routes and contingency plans. His mother had a knack for hiring observant bodyguards, usually former military. He could deal with that. Oliver has spent much of his life these past few years trying to dodge Amanda Waller, surely getting away from his new babysitter wouldn't be much of a struggle.

His mother was looking at him with disapproving eyes. "While you and Tommy were drinking away merrily into the night, a murderous vigilante killed multiple men across the street from you. From what I can tell, the SCPD believes that this madman could have multiple targets."

"So?" Oliver said, pulling on his carefree, unworried façade and wrapping it around himself like a security blanket. "We were fine. From what I've seen on the news, the killer seems to go after the corrupt, evil rich people. I don't think Tommy and I have to worry."

Moira slammed her hands down on the tabletop. The uncharacteristic move made the sound seem as loud as a thunderclap. Both Thea and Oliver jolted at the move. "People died, Oliver!" Their mother cried out angrily. "It could have been Tommy! It could have been _you!_ "

Something in his heart twisted with guilt. "Mother…"

"I can't lose you again." His mother sounded close to tears. Oliver was horrified.

"Mom," his voice became softer, gentler than he had believed himself capable of. "I'm fine. I'll be fine, I promise."

"I've only just gotten you back." His mother whispered, staring at him with watery eyes, though no tears had fallen. Her anguish enveloped the room, becoming so thick a knife could cut through it. "I can't lose you again."

Oliver would have had to be heartless to argue further. "Alright…"

His mother's smile was dazzling in its genuine affection towards him. Oliver tried not to slink in his seat as he realized that in order to slip away, his mother would continue to worry about his safety. There was an uncomfortable wiggling in his gut, making him feel dirty.

* * *

John Diggle considered himself to be a patient, level-headed man. Afghanistan had taught him that a clear head could make the difference between life and death. Overall, however, John Diggle considered himself a soldier.

And yet, here he was, a man without a war, stuck babysitting rich kids.

He had gone back Stateside once his tour had ended. It had been nice, for a while. Even though he had to deal with absolute brats with too much money and too little sense, he managed to make it work. He had a job that, while boring, was safe and paid the bills. He had had Andy with him and, through his brother, John gained a sister-in-law and a nephew.

That didn't mean his life was a state of perfection.

He and Lyla were still separated. Save from a few calls every six months, basically the standard thirty second call to make sure the other was alive and well, John didn't see much of his ex-lover. And yet, after each of those brief conversations, he still felt that familiar ache in his heart. If only duty hadn't divided them… perhaps they could have worked things out. Theirs was a relationship was one full of 'what ifs' that he tried not to think about.

So instead, he threw himself into his work. He worked earnestly, allowing himself to be absorbed with his new duties. It wasn't healthy by any means, but it gave him something to focus on. Before Afghanistan, his focus had been on Andy. During Afghanistan it had been protecting his comrades and making sure everyone got home safe. Now, after his discharge and his brother dead, John turned his focus on keeping his clients safe. Focus came from being dutiful. If he slackened even the tiniest bit, let himself rest for even a moment, the ghosts would come back to haunt him.

A new job offer had popped up, guided along nicely with a recommendation from a previous client. The standard bodyguard routine, with the additional orders to report where his new client was spending his time. A classic overprotective parent move.

The fact that the job had been given to him by Moira Queen of all people, however, was a bit of a surprise.

Yet, in all honesty, Diggle expected this job to be similar to the others. Even if Oliver Queen turned back to his roots as a playboy who liked the club scene, Diggle had had enough experience with men of a similar breed who spent much of their existence drinking or vomiting their innards in an alleyway or on his shoes. He had taken the job without any hesitation. It paid well, and it was convenient to have a steady job in the same city that his sister-in-law and nephew were living in.

And so, here he was in the driveway of the luxurious Queen family home. Moira Queen had already come to find him with her new husband, Walter Steele, at her side. They greeted him politely before bringing out a young man from the manor.

Oliver Queen was instantly recognizable, if only because his face had been plastered on every newspaper, magazine cover and news broadcast for the past few weeks. The media had been quite obsessed with the Queen family of late. The billionaire castaway spin sold well in the magazines apparently.

Diggle's first impression of the man was… a bit of befuddlement.

After five years on an uncharted island, John had been expecting a malnourished man. Thin arms, little to no muscle, bloated stomach, shrunken physique. Perhaps even timid and nervous around people after spending so long in near isolation. Instead it seemed the complete opposite.

Oliver Queen was a massive man, broad at the shoulder, built like a brick wall with a stony face to go along with it. His stance was loose, but guarded, like a coiled spring. There was nothing about the Queen heir that struck John as a man who had struggled for survival every day for a half a decade. Instead it looked more like the man had been hitting the gym every day.

"Mr. Queen," he stuck out his hand. The younger man took it, and Diggle tried not to raise a brow at the vice-like grip. Oliver had a surprisingly firm grip that borderlined on the slightly painful.

"Nice to meet you, Mr. Diggle." Mr. Queen gave him a bright and cheery smile; one that showed off far too many teeth that made it anything but genuine. "I understand you will be accompanying me."

Ah, so it was going to be one of _those_ clients. The ones who didn't like the idea of having a bodyguard. John had had clients like that before, and none had ever been worth the headache.

 _Let's just hope this one isn't a runner…_

John hid his true thoughts behind an easy smile. It was a smile perfected after years of service. "Yes indeed, sir. I'll be keeping you safe."

Diggle just hoped this new client wouldn't vomit on his shoes.

"Mr. Diggle will be making sure you're safe," Moira informed Oliver, her tone stern. Perhaps Moira had caught her son's charlatan act and was making sure that her son wouldn't attempt any foolish mutiny. Diggle appreciated that. "He'll be with you at all hours."

Oliver's smile grew wider until it seemed as though his cheeks would crack. "How _wonderful_." His eyes curled into tiny slits, a pretender for joy, but Diggle caught the flintiness in his gaze, as sharp as a blade's fine edge. There was a warning in Oliver's eyes, hidden away behind false cheer.

John felt a chill roll down his body, as though someone with an icy touch had trailed down his spine. Suddenly, he had a very bad feeling about all of this.


	11. Chapter 11

It was nearing midnight, and the residents of Starling City had long since gone to bed. As the good, hardworking people slumbered, those with ill-intentions rose up as soon as the sun went down. One of these men was Marcus Fredman, a corrupt businessman with a tendency for stealing funds from the pensions of his workers. He was on the List, and so Oliver had chosen him as the next name to cross out.

It was here, atop of a high rise owned by Fredman, that Oliver stood, hood drawn up and his bow discarded. Fredman's bodyguards were littered across the gravel rooftop, unconscious or bleeding. Fredman himself was in Oliver's grasp, kicking and screaming.

"P-Please! Oh god, please, let me go!" Marcus screamed, only for his plea to be drowned out by the whirling of the AC fan that was steadily growing closer to his face. The protective grate had been ripped out, leaving nothing to stop Oliver from pushing the man into the deadly rotating fans. "Please, s-stop; you'll kill me! Jesus fuckin' Christ, stop!"

Oliver was unmoved by the screaming, even as the man began to openly sob in terror. There was no room for pity in his heart, not when this man had proved himself to be nothing more than scum. "Marcus Fredman! You have failed this city!"

The fans were getting closer to the man's face as Oliver slowly lowered Fredman. "What do you want!?" Fredman kept sobbing, crying thick tears as he struggled against an unyielding iron-grip.

"You took money rightfully belonging to the men and women who worked under you, who trust you! You stole from them for personal gain. Are you ready to face the consequence?"

Fredman wailed.

 _Repulsive_. That was all Oliver could think. _A weak, spineless craven who holds no thought to those deemed below him. Nothing more than a menace to those who hold less power than him… How pitiful and lonely it must be to only love yourself._

"This is your one chance to redeem yourself and to save your life." Oliver growled into the man's ear, still holding Marcus' head down. "What are you going to do, Marcus Fredman? You know who I am, and what I am capable of. I will not hesitate to kill you, or anyone else who gets in my way. The question is: are you prepared to lie in the grave you have made? Are you ready to die? Or will you take this one small act of mercy, where I let you go, alive and unhurt, if you swear to right the wrongs you have committed?"

The immediate answer was nothing but silence, aside from the _whoosh_ - _whoosh_ of the AC fan. Oliver did nothing, because he already knew what choice Marcus would make.

Marcus Fredman proved himself weak in the face of death. In his travels, Oliver had discovered a disheartening truth about mankind: the human character was often one of shallowness and self-interest. Even though Oliver knew that there were always the odd few that defied the odds and proved themselves spectacular, the majority of humanity was too flawed, imperfect even, to deny the fear of death. It was a consistent symptom of sentient mortality: death. For it is the end of everything.

Fredman was nothing like Adam Hunt had been when faced with the same choices that Oliver had presented alongside his threats. Hunt had been arrogant and careless, threats of death did little to scare him, yet his blindness and underestimation of Oliver's determination done him in in the end. But Marcus Fredman?

Fredman feared death like everyone else.

And so, when given the choice of embracing death via a rotary AC fan to the face or to live another day, even at the cost of his reputation, it was an easy choice.

"I'll give it up, I promise! Oh god, I swear! I'll give it all back, every penny!" Marcus sobbed. "I promise; please don't kill me!"

Oliver's iron-grip slackened ever so slightly. "Very well. Make sure you follow through. I will not be merciful the next time we meet if you do not uphold your promise. Remember that. I'll know if you break this promise, Fredman. For I will be watching you." Oliver then threw the man sideways, away from the fan and to relative safety, where the businessman rolled over groaning on the gravel, still sniffling and trembling from terror.

By the time Marcus Fredman managed to blink away the tears that obscured his sight, all that he could see were his bodyguards, either dead or unconscious. Other than them, the rooftop was empty and silent.

The vigilante had vanished.

* * *

By the time Oliver woke up, it was early noon. He sat up, stretching his sore limbs out until he heard the satisfying cracks of his aching joints. Oliver got up, padding sleepily across the wooden floor and opened the door to his closest. A freshly pressed suit was hung up, already fitted to his size. There were scores of old ties from his life before the island, but Oliver had had to ditch his old shirts and suits as they didn't fit him anymore. He put on the suit slowly, still trying to shake away the drowsiness from his limbs.

When he headed down into the foyer, Oliver found his mother, sister and new stepfather –and hadn't _that_ been a surprise- seated in front of the TV as one of Starling City's local news announcement was being aired. In the top right corner there was a picture of Marcus Fredman, and below the news anchor was a subtitle: _Mysterious_ _Hooded Vigilante Strikes Again: Fredman Caught Red-handed?_

" _-Mr. Fredman claims refunding the Halycon pension plan has always been his intent, but sources say Fredman was coerced by the vigilante. The mysterious archer came into the public eye with a brutal, yet efficient take-down on Adam Hunt, who is now sentenced to twenty years in Iron Heights for embezzlement and fraud. The vigilante stills remains at large, and anyone with information about their identity or whereabouts are encouraged to call the police."_

Oliver smiled a bit when the news anchor revealed a sketch artist's rendition of the hooded vigilante and large, blocky numbers that gave out of the emergency hotline. Some people might have been concerned about that, since it might have shown that there were people now actively trying to catch and arrest him. Yet, all he felt was a bit of amusement at the profile. It wasn't entirely accurate, more than enough differences to stop anyone from linking Oliver Queen with the vigilante archer. _They got my nose wrong,_ Oliver mused.

The news announcement continued on. The status of Marcus Fredman was being discussed. Would he be imprisoned, or given a slap on the wrist? Either way, the announcer seemed certain that the vigilante was striking fear into the hearts of wrongdoers.

"This city used to be different," Moira commented from where she sat in a chair, one hand gripping the arm rest tightly as she watched the news. "People used to feel safe."

Oliver hummed at that, appearing for all the world to see as someone unconcerned with the news of a dangerous city and a masked vigilante. "Maybe they'll start to feel safe again soon."

* * *

Later in the day Oliver, his mother, Walter and Tommy left Queen Manor to head into the heart of Starling City and enter the courthouse. It was today that Oliver Queen was officially being resurrected in all legal means. When the _Queen's Gambit_ had sunk five years ago, rescuers had never managed to find the wreckage or any sign of the passengers. Without any bodies, the court had ruled everyone aboard as deceased via death absentia.

Thea had decided to not come. Apparently a second trip to court –the first came from stealing a taxi with Tommy ages ago- was something she didn't care for. Oliver tried to not read too deep into the situation, but he couldn't deny that he was hurt by his sister's apparent rejection. In order to ignore what was happening between them, Oliver focused on gaining back his life.

Repealing his deceased status wasn't difficult. All Oliver had to do was present himself before the court. He had been practicing these words for years. When it came time to talk about the events that had occurred on the night the Queen's Gambit sank, the lies came easily from his lips.

"There was a storm." A night of unrelenting squalls that shrieked and howled, of heavy rain so thick no one could see, of a dark night where the only source of light came from the frequent lightning and the artificial glow of the emergency lantern on the life boat. "I don't remember much, only that it hit fast and hit hard. I was with Sara when it began. Once the thunder got louder, we left to investigate. A rogue wave knocked me off the deck, and I fell into the ocean. Sara, from what she told me, managed to find the life boat. She found me a few minutes later, barely treading the water. I would have drowned that night if she had not found me."

The courtroom was silent as Oliver paused to take a breath. Everyone was staring at him with rapt attention. He tried to not look at his family, but in the corner of his eye he could spot his mother gripping Walter's arm, knuckles bone-white.

"Only Sara and I managed to get on the life boat. It was so dark, and the waves were so strong… everyone else drowned. The crew… my father… they didn't make it." Four had died that night but, for the sake of preserving his father's image, Oliver informed the court that six had died that night, including Robert Queen. Perhaps he was weak, but Oliver didn't want to have to recall that moment where Robert had willingly killed a crewmember and then turned the gun on himself, just so there would be enough water for Oliver.

" _If anyone is going to make it, it's going to be him!"_

His father had sacrificed everything for Oliver to live. And so, for both his own sake and for the wellbeing of his mother and sister, Oliver kept quiet about what had actually happened. Mother and Thea didn't need to know that Robert had killed himself. It was better if they thought Robert Queen had simply drowned in that storm.

His heart twanged painfully in his chest, like an old wound that never healed right. It was a dull ache, as though the wound had festered. Oliver took one deep, shaky breath to gather his thoughts, before he leaned closer to the microphone. He kept his eyes on the judge; the stares of the court burned into his backside. Oliver had the distinct impression that he was like an ant observed by a curious eye beneath a magnifying glass.

It became to breathe. Suddenly the courtroom seemed too small, too stuffed. All he could focus on was the stale tang of poor ventilation. Oliver desperately wished Sara were there with him, standing by his side. He wished he didn't have to be alone in this. Still, he pressed on.

"Only I and Sara Lance survived that night. By the time the storm had died down, the waves had long since pushed us away from the wreck. We tried to look for survivors, we truly did!" A desperate plea before the court that sounded genuine to everyone but Oliver himself. "I can't even tell you how many days we spent in that life boat, just floating adrift. We lost count. By the time the water ran out, we still hadn't heard or seen any rescue planes or boats. We were ready to give up hope… it seemed so certain then that we were going to die, but then we saw the island."

The court seemed to hold their breath all at once, leaving the courtroom deathly still. This was the first time anyone had heard more about the island; they were curious and wanted answers to their inner questions. How did they survive? Another would wonder, thinking about the cold nights and dangerous wildlife. What did they have to do live another day? Some might whisper to their neighbor.

Most people were like vultures scavenging for even the slightest morsel of juicy information. Either to satisfy their own curiosities or to sell it to the nearest dishrag gossip piece or glossy supermarket tabloid. Oliver had no tolerance for people of that nature. Privacy was something he had lacked for years under Amanda, and now that he was free to live his life with Sara, he didn't want anyone sticking their nose into his business.

 _After the List is completed, I want to be able to live my life. I want to lay down my bow, hang up the hood and simply live._ Oliver reflected tenderly. _Sara and I could move away, somewhere far enough to keep the ghosts at bay, but close enough to be with family. And we could make trips to Hong Kong in our free time, maybe Australia too…_

"Is there anything else you forgot to mention or wish to tell, Mr. Queen?" The judge asked, breaking Oliver out of his thoughts.

Blinking a bit in confusion, he peered up owlishly at the judge, before smiling weakly. "Nothing important." He admitted, rubbing the back of his head sheepishly.

The woman nodded in understanding. "If not, then I rescind your death certificate in light of your survival." The judge, bless her, seemed sympathetic about bringing the session to end. "That is all."

The courtroom dispersed. The majority left almost immediately to get a breath of fresh air after breathing in the stale, crowded courtroom for the past hour. A few stragglers stayed behind, talking to one another in low tones, but respectfully left the Queen family alone. Breathing a sigh of relief, Oliver allowed himself a moment to calm himself down, closing his eyes and taking deep breaths to slow his hammering heartrate. Reminiscing about the past was one thing; talking about it in front of strangers was a different thing altogether. By the time his eyes opened, the courtroom was nearly deserted. Oliver grabbed what little possessions he had brought with him, and headed out the room.

Near the exit of the courtroom Moira, Walter and Tommy stood in a group waiting for him. Oliver's new bodyguard, John Diggle, was there as well, standing a respectful distance from the patient family. Tommy offered a thumbs up and gave a side-loped grin, something Oliver gave back in return. "Ready to go, buddy?" Tommy gave a mock punch to the shoulder, "Let's grab something to eat. Standing before the court must have worn you down."

Moira's lips pursed at that. "You did fine, Oliver." She embraced him, clinging to him tightly. When she let go after a few moments, she was wiping a thumb against a tear clinging to her cheek. "You were so brave."

Before Oliver could respond to the tender moment, they were interrupted by Diggle, who had just approached. "I'll bring the car right up, Mr. Queen." Without waiting for a response, Diggle left his side and headed down the corridor. Oliver watched him go.

"I only wish we could use the side entrance." He couldn't help but comment, already dreading the paparazzi that were staked out on the front steps of the courthouse.

Moira put a hand on his arm comfortingly. "I'm sorry, Oliver. Those reporters are vultures I tell you. Are you alright, darling? You seemed rather pale when we passed them." She looked him over, as though expecting him to faint right there. "You didn't look well."

Didn't look well? He had nearly gone crazy. But what could he say that would give his mother comfort, when there was nothing good to tell?

Did he tell her that his senses had been cranked up all the way to eleven? That he could see things so detailed it wasn't humanly possible, that, if he focused, he could smell and hear as well as a canine? That he had been overcome and overwhelmed by the light and the noise, until it was all he could see and feel?

The flashes of cameras had been like floodlights burning into his eyes, the relentless questions of reporters had been like thunder in his ears, the rough touching of hands clenching microphones had been rough waves that threated to drown him. Even with all his training and years of living with the _Mirakuru_ , it still took him by surprise at times.

Everything he had experienced at that moment had flooded his senses, and it had only been his mother gently prodding him in the back that allowed him to continue to step forward. In fights, it was useful to have enhanced senses. But in everyday life? It was a constant nuisance. A weakness he couldn't afford to show.

Still, his mother wanted an answer, and Oliver would try to provide one to the best of his abilities.

"Loud noises and bright flashes just aren't my thing anymore," he admitted uncomfortably, still a bit embarrassed to have been so easily caught off guard and agitated by the reporters. Inwardly he was cursing himself and wishing he could sink into the floorboards. "And having a dozen people shoving microphones under my face and screaming all at once… I'm not used to that anymore." Oliver gave a wryly smile, an attempt to convey humor in a humorless situation. "It's funny, I forgot just how loud people could be."

"You seemed fine at the party," Tommy noted.

"I had earplugs in." Even then, it had been difficult. Tommy looked rather put out by the admittance.

A small, distressed noise caught in the back of his mother's throat at that. "We can wait an hour or two. I know we wanted to go to the offices after this, but if you're not feeling up for it…"

"I'd like that." The relieved enthusiasm didn't even have to be faked. They began to fall into line as Oliver left the room. Moira and Walter excused themselves. They had made it seem as though they were just checking on something, but Oliver could tell that they were going after Mr. Diggle to make sure the transition from courthouse to car was smooth. Words didn't even begin to describe the appreciation for that kind gesture, even if he was about to tarnish it by stealing it under his bodyguard's nose to meet up with Sara.

Tommy stuck with him as they walked through the hallway. The Meryln heir was talking animatedly, but Oliver was only half paying attention. Anything Tommy was saying was just noise without meaning. "Uh-huh." He murmured in response, still half-absorbed in his own thoughts. They turned a corner, and-

His heart froze and leapt into his throat. "Laurel?"

Sure enough, it was Laurel Lance was standing right before him, looking none too pleased at running into him. She was accompanied by a woman he distantly remembered seeing at the CNRI, a coworker perhaps? There was another woman besides her, blonde and pale with mournful blue eyes that had seen too much grief.

"Oliver." Laurel's clipped greeting brought him back to the present. "What are you doing here?" The eldest Lance sister looked rather rattled.

All thought processing had switched off at the sudden emergence of Laurel Lance. It took him a moment to remember how to speak, much less give a dignified answer. "Coming back from the dead." He winced at that. "Legally speaking, I mean. Because-"

"-I know how death certificates work," Laurel interrupted brusquely, "Working on a case, after I'm going to meet up with the judge about rescinding Sara's death certificate." Without even waiting for his response, Laurel turned around and addressed the blonde woman. "Oliver just got back from five years on a deserted island," Laurel informed the woman, who noticeably got uncomfortable. "Before that he was cheating on me with my sister."

There was an awkward silence that soon followed. Oliver honestly didn't know how to proceed, and Tommy seemed thoroughly silenced.

It was the woman that reacted first, the stranger in the group with a dynamic that was as toxic as poison. The blonde looked thoroughly uncomfortable as she stuck her hand out in greeting. "Uh, nice to meet you." Oliver shook her hand gently in return.

Laurel's face was stony, almost expressionless aside from the slight sign of pain in her eyes. "Let's go." She murmured to her co-worker, before walking away without a single glance back.

Oliver didn't say anything, he watched her go wistfully. What could even be said? There was nothing to say anymore.

* * *

"What are you doing?" Sara asked him, leaning across the table on her elbows. She was drenched in sweat, cheeks still flushed from doing reps on the salmon ladder and the climbing rope. "Choosing another name?"

Oliver idly flipped a page in the List "Did you know your sister is going after a Martin Somers? He's on the List. Apparently the DA and SCPD don't seem willing to put him on trial, probably due to bribed officials. Laurel is going after him, and she's aiming for the jugular. He's a dangerous man. Different than Hunt, subtle and clever."

Sara sat down on the stool opposite of him, looking at him with interest. "So, you're going after him then?"

"Actually…" Oliver snapped the book shut, and handed it over to her. "I was thinking you should do it."

"Me?" Sara took the List without complaint, but still gave it a dubious look. "I thought the List was your thing. Your father's last wish, your purpose, your vengeance and yadda yadda. You and I might feel the same about Starling City and its corrupt nature, but we have contrasting ways of fixing it."

Oliver grunted at that. "Two different ways of fixing this mess. You want to go for the thugs and gangs that litter the streets; the everyday criminal. You think if you bully them into submission and kill the rebellious, no one will dare try anything. Thieves, enforcers, drug dealers, robbers, gang members, rapists, and so on. You want to purge the streets of the common crook."

"And you want to go after the powerful and corrupt. You think removing the head of the snake will destroy the entire system." Sara shot back, though her tone lacked any bite. "Get rid of the ones with the power, money and means to achieve something greater than those born in the slums, and the common crook is left aimless and disorganized. The ones you're after are corrupt businessmen like Adam Hunt and Marcus Fredman, the crime syndicate families like the Bertinellis' or the Triad."

"We might have opposing opinions, but that doesn't mean we can't help one another. We already support one another fully, without judging the other for how they think the solution they should be." Oliver noted, giving her a little smile. "Take Martin Somers. You've been cooped up in the Glades; very few have noticed you. The media has been focused on me because of my targets, maybe the idea of another vigilante just as ruthless might scare the underworld even more."

Sara looked like she was debating it. After a few moments, she looked at him, eyebrows furrowed. "So why are you giving me this one? You could have given me Hunt or Fredman, or even someone else down the line. What makes Martin Somers different from the rest?" She asked.

"Laurel is going after him in court with the intention of suing, but I don't think he's the type of man to let such a thing happen. I looked into the records, and anyone who tries to take him down are swiftly removed from the picture before they can tarnish his name and reputation."

Sara tensed at that, clutching the List tightly, before she meandered over to her side of the Foundry, where her arsenal of deadly weapons rested. "He kills them, you mean, the ones that can't be bribed?" She picked up a knife and twirled it in her hands. "He'll go after Laurel… he'll try to kill her."

"What are you going to do about it?" There was no denying the curiosity in his tone. Sara had the ability of surprising him from time to time.

Still immersed with her weapons, Sara only turned her head to give him a low, wicked grin. There was something dark in that grin, something that shone with ill intention. "I'm going to do what I've been trained to do." There was a flash of movement as she tossed the List back, which he caught and cradled to his chest. "I'm going to pay Martin Somers a vist…"


End file.
